globally in this future economy that we're seeing created. >> again, we're talking with january met marguia. questions on twitter, don writes, does la raza support illegal immigration? what would the policy look like if the policy went to non-hispanic immigrants? >> sure. the national council of la raza we've been an organization that has served the hispanic population in the united states for at least 43 years. we were created in 1968. and now are an american institution with headquarters here in washington, d.c. we have -- our mission is to really create touopportunities hispanics in the united states and to help everyone achieve the american dream, including latino families. so true to that tradition, we've had a record of impact in engaging on policy issues across

the gamut of the jobs and health care and education. obviously immigration of civil rights and, for us, all those issues become very important as we look to helping make sure that hispanics have opportunities in this country. we also have affiliates. at least 300 community-based organizations that provide services and programs than hispanics across the country. they again teach english classes, offer after-school programs. we have about 115 schart charte schools that we support. we help health programs and other services. what we, i think, is important though for people to understand thep+@g terms of immigration it one of the issues. obviously that we follow closely because it's of great importance to hispanic community. we do believe that it's important to have comprehensive immigration reform and we have support supported that approach to

reforming immigration laws. which means you can't support one aspect of reform. it can't just be about enforcement only. we understand that we have to restore the rule of law, so we do and have supported enforcement and increased enforcement. but we can't do that alone. and i think that's where we separate from a number of other folks want i'm sgrags reform because we understand that you also have to deal with those undocumented immigrants who have been in this country for now a generation. and the status of those families has to be addressed. and what makes things complicated, john, is the fact that, oh, we've got now mixed status families. quouf got folk and those familieses, perhaps a parent is here legally and one of the other spouses -- the spouse is not here legally but you have now a u.s. citizen-born child. we've got to find a rational way and a humane way that deals with

those undocumented immigrants who have been here because i don't think you can ignore them and i don't think the suggestion that one of the candidates put out there, senator -- governor romney that they will all self deport is very realistic. we think you have to have a rational way. those folks should, you know, go to the end of the line, receive background checks, make sure that we ensure that they learn english. but there needs to be a process for them to have a path to citizenship. for us that's going to be important. cracking down on employers who are unscrupulous and who are taking advantage of the current situation is also important. so there's a combined number of elements that would lead us to, i think, what would be a very rational common sense solution on immigration reform and that's what we support. >> again, talking with jan marguia. before you were there you were with the university of kansas and before that a deputy

campaign manager and director of constituency outreach, lieberman/gore campaign and served in the clinton white house as a deputy assistant working on what issues? >> i was the deputy director of legislative affairs, commercial affairs. i worked in helping promote the clinton agenda with congress. i worked very closely with members of congress but probably my, you know, proude esest credential is that i'm a jayhawk. i have three different degrees from the university of kansas. i'm proud to hail from the great state of kansas. >> let's get to the phone. david is from illinois to ask you a few questions. good morning, david. >> caller: good morning. thank you for c-span. i'm wondering, why is your organization photo ids to vote when all other u.s. citizens have to have an id to do all sorts of things, even to buy a pack of cigarettes or alcohol?

and, also, you seem like a very well-spoken, nice woman. do the american people vote that la raza is like an anti-government group of the new mexico and that they may even be some type of terrorist organization? thank you, i'll take your comments off the air. >> charge is from david, independent. >> i'm sorry that you would have heard that or believed that. there are some detractors. i think because of the work we've done on immigration reform, which has been to support a comprehensive rational approach to reforming the immigration laws. there's some detractors who tried to assert some pretty ridiculous notions about nclr, national council of la raza. quite frankly, they're just not true. the fact that we would have some sort of secret agenda to somehow

turn the united states back over to mexico. i can tell you it's patently false. we have no such agenda. in fact, our agenda has been quite an american agenda, one that would essentially help integrate immigrants to the united states. we have a record, you know, of impact that shows that we've done a lot of that over the course of our 43 years here as an organization. really as an american institution in this country. >> but let me get to the first part of his question because we have -- we are concerned about many -- basically what has been an explosion, voter suppression laws across the different states in the country. and our understanding -- and this is also based on reports

out of the brennan justice center that has done lots of reviews about these voter laws that have emerged in the different states. really create barriers to many minorities, not just hispanics but young people and african-americans, elderly, rural areas. many requirements that require photo id really would be a detriment. many in the u.s. population, inlewding hispanics but not just hispanics, don't have access to photo ids. it would be one thing, david in particular, and john, if we had seen that voter fraud was a really big issue in this country and that we really needed to take drastic measures to address it. but that just simply is not the case. we have not seen issues where voter fraud has been dramatically over taken and been a big problem and n. any one state or any given election. and yet we see these laws that would create barriers some say

up to 5 million people would be skted. the brennan justice center said 5 million people would be prohibited from voting with the passage of these laws. mostly they would affect those who are completely legitimate voters with access to the polls. >> let's go back to the phones. roberto is from bronx, new york. good morning, roberto krr good morning. thank you for taking my call. first i'd like to say [ speaking spanish ] and a couple of pet peeves before my question. nobody's panic so hispanic was a congressional law past 1968 to try and group all latinos together. import to ripuerto rican origin. worked here all my life. have two degrees, also.

and i consider myself speaking the english language, although it's not english and when people like gingrich talk about making english the official language, it's -- it's -- it's a racist code to be able to pander to the dominant race in the united states. gingrich, like everybody else, is an immigrant. the original indigenous people -- >> we're losing you there, roberto. i'm sorry. are you still will? >> caller: yes, i'm here. are you there? >> yes. >> caller: great. >> is there a republican in the field now that you would vote for, or are you a democrat?

would you vote for obama? >> caller: i voted democrat, for obama, last time because i feel that he had more to offer and has made the necessary changes that we need. but again, my point is that like the cuban gentleman who was there before talking about being diverse and wanting to be republican when that party is a party of exclusion of elitists, the latino, and, again, i say i am nobody's panic, so hispanic is not something that most latinos identify with although we talk about hispanic. these are all racist code words. >> okay. let's move on to the republican line from ron from san francisco, california. good morning, ron approximately.

>> caller: good morning. thank you for accepting my call, c-span. >> sure. >> caller: well, i think the issue is not immigration per se. it's illegal immigration. anybody that supports anything illegal to me in america is anti-america. and another issue i would like to bring up is that i live here in san francisco and not too long ago a family was wiped out by an illegal area. now, the issue that i have a real problem with it at this point is that you have people -- we have a sanctuary city here. this guy was under the radar for committing a crime before. if he had turned over to immigration at the time he committed a crime, he would have been deported out of the city, out of the country. and what bothers me the most is

that a whole family was wiped out by this guy. an innocent family coming home from a barbecue because he was -- they were mistaken as rival gang members. >> ron from san francisco. i want to turn it back to -- >> can i comment on ron and maybe even roberto? >> sure. >> for ron, let me just assure him that i don't think anyone, including the latino community or hispanic community, would ever want to have protections for serious criminal offenders. i mean, the point of immigration reform really is to allow for reforms that would create, you know, a system that we believe would allow for those who have been product i'ive, who have be making contributions to this country, to allow them to stay under a rational process and orderly process. but no one wants to protect gang members, drug dealers,

murderers, serious criminal offenders, and i think even the hispanic community would be the first to say get them out of here. wabt to make that very clear because people makes a cysts about immigration reform and the fact that somehow criminals and folks who are serious criminal offensers would be people we're trying to protect. that's not case. i think we can reform the system in a way where some individuals should be sent back or let go and we need to make sure that others, though, who have been hardworking, contributing members of this society are allowed to be able to have a ration ali oral system to be able to be part of this society. just a comment on roberto's,ic -- some of his responses. i just want to clarify. we iran ref we often refer to ourselves as latino or hispanic.

it happens to of do with regional. where they are regionally and culturally. you can use hispanic or latino for the most part, people respond differently. we happen to use in our publ lagss the term hispanic and the term latino and we understand there's still a great debate out there on how people want to self identify. >> we started talking about one of our earlier guests about president obama. baiting the hispanic community on the issues of immigration reform. >> howg an issue will be it be in the candidate? >> i think the candidate is going to have to articulate a much clearer position than we've heard today about how they view that issue and, frankly, how they want to engage the hispanic community overall on all the

issues of importance. i think when it comes to president obama, there has been a little bit of enthusiasm gap with hispanics in terms of how they view obama but at the end of the day they will be able to make a comparison on n. a general election and on election day, between president obama and his record and whoever that republican candidate is and their record and their rhetoric. it's going to be important to know at the end of the day there is a choice. >> tammy from texas texas. good morning, tammy. >> caller: good morning. i have completely lost faith in our election process. it just occurs to people over the course of the last two, you know, you've had these skipper class or these entities that if it wrcht for this dynamic

particular pipeline -- >> tammy, what role do you think as a democratic candidate immigration issues are going to play in this election? >> caller: it plays a huge role. the republican party, it represents the hispanic vote. i have worked as a contractor for 30 years in the hill country and recently relocated because of the dynamics of that particular region. i was up against immigration and couldn't compete with these people on the job front. >> let's go to lorenzo on the line we opened up for hispanic colors from gast toonia, north carolina. good morning.

>> larry: >> caller: good morning. >> it's janet. >> caller: i'm sorry. janet. >> it's okay. >> caller: i'm hispanic or latino. my father was bornd in mexico and i was born in texas. i get a lot of negative reaction, but mostly from -- i believe the people who are not educated about our national origin, you know, that we are -- we were indians really by, you know, and this -- this was our country before the white man come along and before -- we had been here longer than anybody. i was stopped the other day by a black man who told me that i wasn't even an american. i mean, people have got -- i think people have got a

misperception about who we are, where we come from, and, you know, we're native americans. >> question on twitter that sort of goes to his question, the real nice -- dnice on twitter asks. what is the state of african-american and hispanic relations today as you see them at la raza. >> i know that we have been working closely with other national organizations including the national urban league and the naacp, we worked with the leadership conference on civil rights which has many different communities of color. for us it's really important that we a appropriate issues, r many issues, economies and job, housing, we have shared objectives and we ought to be working together across different communities and with broad coalitions to address those. and i think we have. we partnered at the national level with many organizations and with leaders like mark and

ben jealous and wade henderson and on and on. so, you know, toer us it's really important, i think, to highlight where we have shared objectives and shared outcomes that we want to achieve and work together. and we have been able to, i think, make some important strides. but most recently i was in alabama in montgomery, the state capital, because alabama just passed a very extreme law that is anti-immigrant and anti-hispanic. and i want to give lorenzo just, i think, what many in the hispanic community are feeling are a new wave of discrimination. i think a lot of this as a result of different state laws like the one in alabama which are creating havoc, not just for immigrants but for u.s. hispanics and for a lot of folks who may happen to look like they're foreign and, of course, that's a very thin line, very dangerous line when we have laws

that make the enforcement of those laws so subjective. and i think lorenzo may be reacting out of a sense of feeling under attack. and with these laws happening like they are in alabama and we saw one in arizona that was also quite controversial that are now being challenged all of the way up to the supreme court, is that it is making people in this hispanic community, latino community, suspect in their own communities because of the subjectivity and because of the broad authority that's now being given to local law enforcement and really turning over the jurisdiction of immigration and enforcement instead of it being something that is traditionally and we believe constitutionally relegated to the federal jurisdiction is now even happening and occurring at the local level. that's creating issues around racial profiling and immigration. >> let's get in phone calls in the five to ten minutes we have left with janet marguia with the

national council of la raza. gr arkansas, good morning. >> caller: well, good morning to you. ma'am, i just have a -- well, i'll start by saying my father-in-law is mexican. he just became a u.s. citizen the long, hard way. i just have a couple of quick short stories and i would like your comment on them. >> we don't have a whole lot of time here. >> caller: yes, sir. i'll hurry. my co-worker, a teacher up here at one of the school systems, a little hispanic girl brought a doily in for show and tell. the teacher was interested and wanted to see how it was made. she was i vited to her house and talked to her mother. went over there, has a nice conversation and everything. soon the little girl tugged on her. you must go. you must go now. why? no white people allowed in the they were hood after dark. >> that is richard from arkansas telling a few stories of his experience. let's go to boston,

massachusetts, with jeromer on the republican line. good morning. >> caller: yes. i'm calling. that statement about the african-american community not having our jesus absolutely false. we don't vote because the senators and the accomplished men of this state where we live in when we call them and ask them for help, they do nothing for us because of their anti-american beliefs. >> are you talking about id checks at the voting booths? >> caller: yeah. >> okay. >> caller: yeah. yes. and number two, reform is just another way of saying amnesty as far as i'm concerned because, first of all, people grow up knowing right from wrong. >> that was jerome. thoughts on amnesty issues as they come in and bring it back to 2012?

>> sure. i don't think you have anybody that supports amnesty today. i think everybody understands that in a post- 9/11 world, we have to have definitely be assertive and making sure that we are clear about our boundaries and understanding that enforcement is part of any sort of immigration reform effort. and when you're actually talking about how to deal with the 11 million who are undocumented here though we need to have thoughtful and strategic approaches. the idea that 11 million people are going to self deport or somehow vanish because you're just dealing with the legal immigrant side of reforms in our immigration system, is not very realistic the we need immigration solutions that really do restore the rule of law that provide an orderly way for folks to have a flow on this border. but to also deal with those 11 million who are here and have been tied here into this country

for at least a generation. and the fact that you have, you know, young people here who were brought through no fault of their own but have grown up in this country and know no other country, pay allegiance to no other countries and to not give them an outlet and some way to have a passage to eight seven ship when they've graduated and attended high schools are in either military service or in college, these dream act kids ought to be given some sort of relief. and i think that's not really -- we're not talking about amnesty for anyone here. we're really talking about taking steps that would require folks to demonstrate good faith connections to this country and to do the background checks and to understand that they have to go at the end of the line and to know that they have to learn english. i don't think anybody is talking about amnesty. we just need rational, reasonable reforms that will

address both the issue on the border but as well as those individuals who are here. >> let's go to john on the democratic line from ventura, california. go ahead, john. >> caller: good morning. buenos dias. i'm an american black man and i believe that anybody who cops to this country who wants to work and honest person and upright should be able to come here. i believe the hispanic people, particularly the mexicans, have been here for much longer than most people, that the only illegal immigrants in this country were the white people who kidnapped black people from africa and brought them here. and that if someone wants to be in this country we should be asking the mexican people for the act to stay here as long with the native americans. i think that the mexicans are being demonized by white races when they had a food economy,

they had no problem working those people on the farms and having them live those conditions and when the economy turned south and went bad, they want to run them out. >> that was john from ventura, california. >> i think there has been a lot of demonization in terms of the rhetoric that we've seen often used around immigration reform. i think even folks in other communities of color realize those kinds of terms may be the way that many see many in the latino community being treated today harkens back to a time when perhaps others in our society were treated with discrimination or a sense of injustice. and so i think there are folks out there who are sympathetic to the fact that we do need to have immigration reform so that once and for all we can deal with these awful, awful cases that we're seeing where racial profiling is happening and

discrimination is occurring. >> let's go to our last call for this segment, david is a republican from tampa, florida, where the election is happening tomorrow. >> caller: good morning. >> good morning. >> caller: we'd like to ask your guest, please, what she believes the message is going to people waiting outside our country to come in the legal way, what sort of a message does birth right citizenship and subsequent chain migration send to those patient a my can'ts? >> it's a good question, david. i think it's one that we have to deal with but i think we have to deal with it, again, through comprehensive approach. you need to be able to make sure that you have strengthened the legal immigration system in this country but you can't do that a alone and expect that the rest of the immigration system is going to be able to work. it does take providing a ou not only legal immigration but to also understanding what kind of

reforms do we need on the border. and there's been billions of dollars invested already on enforcement efforts on the border. how much is enough. i think that's a question that we still haven't heard a response to for many who keep saying we just have to keep building up a more border security. but i think beyond that we also have to have a solution for those folks who are here. and frankly, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. we can find a reform that will deal with legal immigration system reforms that will deal with boarder enforcement, that will deal with the undocumented that are here and deal with employers that have been unscrupulous. and, in fact, we can do so in a way that will provide a great infusion into our economy because we know because of the folks have been in the shadows, they have been withholding, many of the economic advantages we would otherwise see if they were part of society. we can find a way to reform and we do need to be fair as we look

at the immigration system on the legal side but we have to deal with those folks have been undocumented, have been here for a generation. >> we're going to have to end it right there. thank you for joining us so much. janet marguia. today on c-span three, watch a discussion on election issues, voter outreach campaigns and state voter participation efforts. that's hosted by the national association of secretaries of state, live at 1:30 p.m. eastern. >> with the florida primaries just a day away, make final pitches to the state's voters. this afternoon c-span will bring you live coverage starting at about 2:00 p.m. eastern it's newt gingrich speaking to supporters in tampa which is the site of the republican national convention in august. and at 6:10 today we'll go live to mitt romney's campaign event in the state. he will be at a rally at