Published December 09, 2010

| FoxNews.com

The Senate on Thursday punted on a DREAM Act vote after Republicans prevented Democrats from advancing the version that passed the House Wednesday night.

A senior Senate Democratic leadership aide told Fox News that the Senate is expected to vote on the House-passed legislation next week.

"We still hope to consider it before we leave," a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told Fox News.

Reid was originally looking to hold a procedural vote Thursday on a version of the bill his colleague introduced that would carve out a path to legalization for hundreds of thousands of foreign-born youngsters brought to this country illegally. But after the House approved its own version of that bill Wednesday night, Reid tried to shelve the vote and take up the House version instead.

But Republicans refused to let him do that. So Reid effectively let the Senate kill the older version, potentially clearing the way for a DREAM Act vote on the House bill next week.

Democrats always faced an uphill climb to muster the 60 votes needed to advance the legislation over opposition by most Republicans and a handful of their own members.

The House passed the legislation Wednesday night after Democratic leaders painstakingly lined up the votes to push it through.

Supporters view the bill as a step toward eventually giving the nation's 10 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants a chance to gain legal status.

Critics denounce the bill as a backdoor amnesty grant that would encourage more foreigners to sneak into the United States in hopes of eventually being legalized as well.

With the GOP taking control of the House and representing a stronger minority in the Senate next year, failure to enact the legislation by year's end would dim the prospects for action by Congress to grant a path toward legalization for the nation's millions of undocumented immigrants.

Obama's drive to enact the legislation and congressional Democrats' determination to vote on it before year's end reflect the party's efforts to satisfy Hispanic groups whose backing has been critical in elections and will be again in 2012.

The legislation would give hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants brought to the United States before the age of 16, and who have been here for five years and graduated from high school or gained an equivalency degree, a chance to gain legal status if they joined the military or attended college.

Hispanic activists have described the DREAM Act as the least Congress can do on the issue. It targets the most sympathetic of the millions of undocumented people -- those brought to the United States as children, who in many cases consider themselves American, speak English and have no ties to or family living in their native countries.

Students who would be eligible for legalization under the bill fanned out across Capitol Hill to personally lobby lawmakers to back the measure. Seated in the House gallery to watch the debate Wednesday night, a group of them broke out in cheers upon passage of measure, and Democrats turned to applaud them in turn.

Fox News' Trish Turner and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/12/09/senate-punts-dream-act-v...