If you like roller coasters, you enjoyed last week. The Senate had deadlocked over immigration reform along partisan lines, only to see a bipartisan agreement break that deadlock, only to see that agreement fall apart and deadlock return.

After such a crazy ride, immigration reform is not dead, but it will take some fancy footwork to pass it in the 109th Congress.

First, a history lesson, then dancing lessons to teach that footwork.

If you were Rip van Winkle and had just awoken from a 20-year sleep, you would not think you had missed much.

You would see: a weakened second-term Republican president, who was formerly a border-state governor, staking out a position not in agreement with much of his own party in favor of regularizing the status of illegal immigrants; sharp disagreements between the House and the Senate; compromises everywhere, including a plan to be more generous to illegal aliens who had been in the United States for at least five years.

Of course, the president in 1986 was Ronald Reagan. He was not in favor of every measure to regularize the status of illegal aliens, and he favored penalties for employers who hired illegal immigrants, but, unlike Republicans today, he was not afraid to use the word amnesty. In a 1984 presidential debate with Walter Mondale, Reagan said that he believed “in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and who have lived here even though sometime back they may have entered illegally.”

At the time, most of Reagan’s party was opposed to amnesty. One key House vote that preceded the passage of an immigration-reform bill was a motion to strike out the provision that would allow several million illegal aliens to get on the path to citizenship. That amendment barely failed, 192-199. Republicans voted 120-42 for that motion, while Democrats voted 159-68 against it, with Southern Democrats more in agreement with Republicans (47-28).

Ronald Reagan favored immigration reform, but ultimately it was pushed primarily by Congress, and it faced many hurdles. Congress was divided, with a Democratic House and a Republican Senate. And immigration reform died in Congress five straight years. But ultimately, the Simpson-Mazzoli bill was enacted in 1986, providing amnesty for many illegal aliens and toughening employer sanctions for hiring illegals.

While history shows that immigration reform did emerge even under circumstances at least as unfavorable as today, the 109th Congress will not pass immigration reform unless it learns to do the Texas two-step, and therein lies the difficulty.

Any proposed grand compromise will face two steps: passage through the Senate and then further negotiation with the House. The “breakthrough” compromise announced last week had many virtues, but it could not overcome these hurdles. If it were to survive without amendment, it would need the unqualified support of probably 40 Senate Democrats and 20 Senate Republicans to resist amendments and a final-passage filibuster. Then to pass the House without much change, it would likely need a majority of Republicans, as Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has often repeated his mantra that he will fight for something that a “majority of the majority” can support.

Speaker Hastert has sent signals he might condone some sort of guest-worker program, but these initial signals are a long way from agreeing to a Senate bill that puts millions on the path to citizenship.

Key senators will continue to work on a compromise over the recess, as they should, and nothing is impossible, but immigration reform may well have to wait for a future Congress.

Fortier is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.