WASHINGTON (Reuters):

The U.S. Senate dealt a fatal blow yesterday to President George W. Bush's planned overhaul of immigration policy, dashing the hopes of millions of immigrants seeking legal status.

In a make or break vote that exposed deep lack of support among Bush's own Republicans, the legislation fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed in the 100-member Senate to advance toward a final vote.

A visibly crestfallen Bush conceded defeat and said he was moving on to other issues like balancing the federal budget when it became clear the bill would not be revived during his presidency.

"A lot of us worked hard to see if we couldn't find common ground (on immigration), it didn't work," Bush said during a visit to the Naval War College in Rhode Island.

Supporters of the bill, fruit of months of negotiations between a group of Republican and Democratic senators and the White House, were dismayed by the vote and said it was unlikely Congress would tackle comprehensive immigration reform before next year's presidential election.

"No one benefits now, there is nothing to look forward ... it's very disappointing," Rosa Rosales, the national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, told Reuters.

Bush has sought to overhaul U.S. immigration laws for years and this bill was seen as his last chance for a significant domestic legislative victory before leaving office at the end of his second term in January 2009.

The president was unable to overcome fierce opposition from fellow Republicans who said it was an amnesty that rewarded an estimated 12 million immigrants for taking up residence in the United States illegally. A majority of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives also opposed the Senate bill.

Even the promise of an additional $4.4 billion to pay for more border security and enforcement did not quell Republican opposition.

"We tried and we failed," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who helped negotiate the compromise bill.