"Our Democratic State Senate was elected by the people for these kinds of votes,” Steven Choi, the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, said.
The vote, together with the Assembly’s passage last week, thrust New York into the center of the explosive national debate over immigration. It would reverse a nearly 20-year-old ban and end years of political paralysis on the issue.
As recently as last week, resistance from those new legislators had stalled the bill. But with three days remaining in the legislative session, a combination of aggressive activism, emotional appeals and last-minute affirmations from some of those lawmakers helped usher through the proposal.
The bill passed with just one more vote than the minimum needed, 33 to 29. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, signed the bill soon after.
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