Immigration Reform 2013 News: As Senate Vote Nears, Opponents of Immigration Bill Promise Major Opposition

The last time that a major groundswell of opposition took place regarding a widesweeping bill designed to fix the nation's immigration laws, the bill was defeated soundly by the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate of 2007.

With a Senate committee readying to vote this week on the hotly-debated comprehensive immigration reform bill submitted by a bipartisan U.S. Senate group, supporters of the bill are cautiously optimistic that the bill has a better chance than ever at passing. However, while opponents have been slower to rally and mobilize major opposition as opposed to in 2007, they are promising that they will be ready.

During this go-round on immigration, pro-immigration supporters have been far more organized and coalesced as they push for the immigration bill proposed by the "Gang of Eight", the four Republican and four Democratic senators who have worked on the bill.

Their efforts are backed by huge supporters such as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a growing coalition and more Republicans feeling the need to deal with immigration as a way to make inroads with the Latino voters that rejected the GOP at the polls in November.

Public support has also grown for providing a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants living illegally in the U.S. Last week on May Day, thousands of people in cities across the U.S. lined the streets in demonstrations calling for immigration reform.

"The big strategy is to point the people power of the movement towards getting Congress to finish the job in 2013," Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change, one of the main organizers of the events, told the New York Times.

At a rally in Chicago, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., one of the members of the bipartisan senate panel that submitted the bill, said, "We have the best chance we've had in 25 years to pass comprehensive immigration reform this year in Washington, D.C."

However, opponents of the bill still have several weapons, including talk radio hosts that were helpful in having immigration reform turned down in 2007, although conservative commentators have not been as vocal this time around.

"The supporters promoted the bill aggressively before anybody saw the language, and certain Republicans and conservative voices sort of held their fire, but that's beginning to change," Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., told the Associated Press.

However, the senator argues in a point echoed by several opponents of the bill, once the public has more time to look at the bill, opposition will start to mount.

"It's going to be like that mackerel in the sunshine - the longer it's out there the worse it smells," Sessions said.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, released an updated report on Monday warning that immigration reform would cost taxpayers billions of dollars. While the Cato Institute called the last study "fatally flawed," it does not seem to be deterring the foundation.

"There's been a lot of posturing, a lot of talk. We haven't really gotten to the heart of the debate yet," said Dan Holler, communications director for Heritage Action for America, the activist branch of the foundation. "We have the right policy, the numbers are going to be there, and the debate is going to shift. And no amount of ads will be able to shift it back."