U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan confronts hurdle on immigration reform - Winston-Salem Journal: State / Region:

U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan confronts hurdle on immigration reform - Winston-Salem Journal: State / Region:

U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan confronts hurdle on immigration reform-- Two years ago, Sen. Kay Hagan was among five Democrats who joined Republicans to defeat an immigration reform effort.


Now, some of those same Democrats from conservative states could be pivotal to the success of a broader overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, political analysts say.

Supporters for immigration feel they can get enough Democrats to pass the bill that would grant a path to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants.

But Israel Ortega, editor of the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation’s Spanish language website, Libertad.org, said it could take only a few reluctant Democrats such as Hagan to wreck the bill.

As an example, he noted the Democrats who joined Senate Republicans two years ago to doom an effort that would have given hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants a path to legal status. They would have needed to enroll in college or joined the military.

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