ImmigrationReid confident immigration reform bill will pass the Senate

Immigrant advocates at an immigration reform prayer rally // Source: illinois.edu

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) said   passage of the immigration bill will be relatively easy, and that he believes the bill will be supported by at least eight Republican, in addition to  votes from nearly all Democratic members.

“I talked about this to a number of my senators today, and what he wanted to say is they haven’t done a whip count on this yet,” The Las Vegas Sun reports Reid to say. “I think we have 60 votes. Remember, we start out at 55 Democrats. I think the most I’ll lose is two or three. Let’s say I wind up with 52 Democrats. I only need eight Republicans, and I already have four, so that should be pretty easy.”

To avoid a filibuster, the bill must cross a 60-vote threshold, and while Reid is convinced the bill has reached that point, others are not so sure. The Huffington Post reports that Senator Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey), a member of the Gang of Eight, said last week that although there is a Republican support for the bill, the bill has not yet reached the filibuster-proof 60-vote threshold.

“We need to add more votes on the floor,” Menendez told Univision. “That means that the community in your state, in every state, should be contacting your state’s two U.S. senators saying that they want comprehensive immigration reform, that they are going to judge their political future based on this vote. And if we do this, both in the Senate and, later, with the members of the House of Representatives, we can achieve the victory that we want.”

Earlier this week Reid also appeared on ABC’s This Week and said the he believes the senate immigration bill will pass.

“It’s certainly gonna pass the Senate,” Reid told host George Stephanopoulos. “And it would be a bad day for our country and a bad day for the Republican Party if they continue standing in the way of this. So the answer is yes.”

Currently the legislation’s Republican supporters include the four senators who worked on the bill — Marco Rubio (R-Florida), John McCain (R-Arizona), Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), and Jeff Flake (R-Arizona). Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has not yet said whether he will vote for the bill, but the bill’s authors have added several technology industry-related amendments to the bill which Hatch had asked for in return for his support.