Any type of amnesty for illegal aliens is not going to happen until the southern border with Mexico is secured. The U.S. Senate made it clear today.

The weeks of rallies, hunger strikes and sit-ins and the thousands of phone calls placed to Senate offices didn’t pay off for immigration activists.

The decade-old DREAM Act once again failed to break a filibuster in the Senate on Saturday morning, effectively killing the bill this year and shutting the door on what perhaps was the last chance for pro-immigration reform legislation until at least the 2012 election.

Senate Democrats came up five votes short of the 60 needed to advance the House-passed bill, which would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants brought to the country as children if they attend college or join the military for two years.

The 55-41 vote was mostly along party lines, though a handful of Democrats — perhaps fearful of their 2012 election outlook — also voted against the DREAM Act.

Mickey Kaus has the politics of the vote here.

Swing votes:  Lincoln—yes …Brownback—no … Scott Brown—no … Tester— no … Snowe—no … Nelson—no … Kirk—no … Sherrod Brown—yes … Lemieux—no … Baucus—no … Webb—yes … Voinovich—no … McCaskill—yes … Hagan—no … Murkowski—yes … Hutchison—no … Collins—no …

Final vote: 55 yes, 41 no … DREAM fails to get cloture. It looks like a close thing. My side’s line will (not implausibly) be that the DREAMers fell five votes short of the 60 they needed  … The four senators who ducked having to vote include Manchin, who seems a bit cowardly for that. Maybe he has an excuse. [Update: Politico says he put out a statement opposing DREAM.] Also Hatch, Gregg, and Bunning. At least those last two seem like “no” votes, and none of the three was a sure yes … All in all, five Dems voted no (Tester, Baucus, Pryor, Ben Nelson, Hagan) … Semi-surprise “yes” vote: Dorgan, retiring Democrat who has on occasion been a “comprehensive reform”-skeptic from the old-school union, anti-cheap labor point of view. During the informative (only 50% cheerleading) lo-fi Numbers USA live feed, Rosemary Jenks attributes this to Dorgan’s desire to take a university position when he retires. I guess you can’t be a college president and oppose DREAM …

The fact is the DREAM Act has been languishing in the Congress for a decade and with GOP regaining control of the House, it will be DEAD for at least two years.

Now, is the time for the Congress to vote to secure the border with Mexico and stop the influx of illegal aliens. It is out of control in California and will have REAL political effects for the GOP and America, if the diluge is NOT stopped and stopped now.

Thanks to those Senators who opposed this illegal alien amnesty – now get to work to close off that border!