Immigration Reform 2013: Senate To Vote On 'Border Surge' Amendment

The United States Senate will vote late on Monday afternoon on whether or not to continue debate on the "border surge" amendment to a comprehensive immigration reform bill. About a dozen Republican senators had indicated they would join the 54 Democrats expected to support the amendment, making it likely to pass with a margin of victory close to the 70 votes which the bill's main supporters are shooting for in the bill's final vote in the Senate at the end of this week.

Details to the "border surge" amendment were worked out last week by a small bipartisan group of senators and sponsored by Republican Senators Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota. Meant as a concession to conservatives who were pushing for beefed-up border security, the amendment calls for the completion of 700 miles of fencing along the border and doubles the number of border patrol agents on the ground to over 40,000 -- one officer for every 1,000 feet, according to ABC News. It will also allot $3.2 billion in extra funding for drone aircraft and other surveillance equipment to detect people trying to cross the border. All this must be implemented before the nation's estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants would become eligible to apply for a green card, or permanent residency.

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The amendment to the bill was widely hailed as a breakthrough and a compromise that might discourage opposition to the bill's legalization measures among conservatives in the House. But Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), one of the most vociferous critics of the bill, insisted that the "border surge" would never happen.

"The amnesty occurs first, and just like so often in the past, the promises never occur," Sessions said, according to the Associated Press.

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Another Senate opponent, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), predicted the bill would pass the Senate but that "it's dead on arrival in the House." He added, "The House is much closer to me, and I think they think border security has to come first before you get immigration reform."

Many House conservatives want the border to be locked down before any offer of legal status is made to the undocumented -- if, that is, they support any such offer at all.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) contradicted the Republican senators' claims Monday on the Senate floor, saying that the immigration bill will pass with bipartisan support and called on House Speaker John Boehner to "bring it up for a vote in the House of Representatives quickly."

The vote comes just as a poll by the Pew Research Center indicated today that almost half of American voters said they thought legalization could be allowed to happen while border security measures were carried out on the border, while 43 percent said the border should be put under control first.