Immigration Bill Debate Nears in Senate

Republican leaders are betting that passage of an 867-page bipartisan overhaul will halt the embarrassing erosion of support among Latinos last year that helped return Mr. Obama to the Oval Office. But the party’s conservative activists are vowing opposition, dead set against anything linked to Mr. Obama and convinced that the immigration bill is nothing more than amnesty for lawbreakers.

That intraparty clash will play out for the next three weeks on the Senate floor, as Republican supporters of the bill — aided behind the scenes by the Obama administration — seek modest changes that they hope will secure broad support among both parties. Senator Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire, announced on Sunday that she would support the immigration bill, calling it a “thoughtful bipartisan solution to a tough problem.”

At the same time, conservative Republican senators, led by Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Ted Cruz of Texas, are preparing an onslaught of amendments that threaten to unravel the carefully crafted compromise. Their goal is to defeat the bill altogether or, at the least, prevent it from providing a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million immigrants who are in this country without authorization.

“It will definitely give amnesty today,” Mr. Sessions said on Friday as the chamber prepared for the debate, which is scheduled to begin on Tuesday.

The final vote in the Senate, which is set to come by the time senators leave for their Fourth of July break, could shape the future of the Republican Party and help determine the political strength of the conservative movement heading into next year’s midterm elections.

If all 54 Democratic senators vote for the bill, which is unlikely, supporters would need six Republicans to prevent a filibuster and pass the legislation.

For the president, the passage of a bipartisan immigration bill would be a critical piece of his legacy, made even more important by the Republican defeat in April of the gun-control measures he was pushing. A failure to pass the immigration legislation would reignite anger among Mr. Obama’s Latino supporters and raise questions about his ability to move an agenda forward in his final three and a half years in office.

In his weekly radio address on Saturday, Mr. Obama urged Congress to give him a bill to sign by the end of the summer. “We know the opponents of reform are going to do everything they can to prevent that,” he said. “They’ll try to stoke fear and create division. They’ll try to play politics with an issue that the vast majority of Americans want addressed. And if they succeed, we will lose this chance to finally fix an immigration system that is badly broken.”

The legislation, which would be the first major immigration overhaul since President Ronald Reagan backed amnesty for illegal immigrants in 1986, was drafted over the last several months by the so-called Gang of Eight, a bipartisan group of senators. It is largely in step with the president’s goals of offering a path to citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants already in the country while tightening border security and expanding legal entry into the country for families and workers.

But no one expects the bill to pass the Senate without some modifications. Mr. Obama’s Republican allies on the issue — in particular Senators Marco Rubio of Florida, a member of the bipartisan group, and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma — warned last week that the president could lose their support without stronger efforts to secure the border, as well as other changes.

“I’m trying to get to where I can say yes,” Mr. Coburn said as senators prepared to clear the way for what could be weeks of debate in the full chamber. “But the only way you can say yes and sell it to the American people is to know that the border is secure, and this bill doesn’t do it.”

Mr. Obama will try to set the tone for the legislative fight with a speech at the White House on Tuesday. But the battle will quickly shift to the Capitol, where the biggest struggle may be over how far to go in securing America’s border with Mexico against illegal crossings.

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