Senate to Look at Dream Act for Illegal Immigrants

Washington Post: The Senate will consider Tuesday whether hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children should be placed on a path to citizenship. The prospects for the legislation to pass are considered slim, particularly given the public's embrace of tough immigration laws in Arizona and other states. Several versions of the Dream Act have been debated in Congress over the past decade, but none of the measures has succeeded.The controversial measure is being pushed by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who bypassed usual Senate procedures by including it in a defense reauthorization bill. The maneuvering in the Senate comes as Reid is locked in a tight reelection battle against Republican Sharron Angle, a favorite of the "tea party" movement. Polls show that Reid is in a dead heat with Angle or narrowly ahead. Hispanic voters, who constitute as much as a quarter of voters in the state, are expected to strongly back passage of the Dream Act. For the moment, both the Reid and Angle campaigns are betting the issue will help them.