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Tavis: Janet Murguia is the president and CEO of the National Council Of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic Civil Rights organization. Prior to her current post, she served as deputy assistant in the Clinton White House. Yesterday here in Los Angeles, La Raza wrapped up its annual conference. I was honored to moderate one of the town hall forums. Janet Murguia, nice to have you in studio.

Janet Murguia: Thank you, Tavis, thanks for having me here. It's a pleasure.

Tavis: Oh, it's my pleasure to have you. The hot topic at the NCLR this year, let me guess. (laughs) Immigration.

Murguia: That's right. And I think that's appropriate, but it's also a little bit unfortunate that we can't get this issue off the table, Tavis. Because it's dominating the landscape. We have so many issues that our organization and our community cares about, like education and health and homeownership. But it just seems like this issue is sucking all the oxygen is out of the room. But it just means we have to take care of it now, and find a comprehensive solution.

Tavis: Let me ask you, not out of any naivete, why you think that this particular issue, immigration, is, at this moment, dominating the landscape?

Murguia: Well, I think a lot of it is fear. I think there's a lot of folks who have a lot of anxiety about this new population. And we have seen some increases, but the fact of the matter is is immigration is part of our history as a country, and we are a country of immigrants. And I do think that there are some, though, who are using this issue in a way to maybe create some division and wedges between different communities.

And it's unfortunate, because we can find a practical solution that secures our border, to this issue. But I think some people are banking that this could be a political issue, and are using it as some sort of political football as opposed to trying to just get a solution, which is challenging. But we can come up with a bipartisan, comprehensive approach that deals with this.

Tavis: Two questions. Who might some of those people be who you think are using it as a wedge? And I ask that only because I was fascinated that you had Clinton, Bill Clinton speaking at this conference, and Karl Rove...

Murguia: That's right.

Tavis: ...was invited, and showed up as well.

Murguia: That's right.

Tavis: So you got both sides talking to you.

Murguia: Yeah, yeah.

Tavis: So who's using this as a wedge issue?

Murguia: Well, I think, let's face it, there's a division within the Republican party. Not just to pick on them, but there is a division within the Republican party, and I think there's a real fight for the Republican party between the moderates and some of the conservatives as to what their position is gonna be on this issue. And what we're seeing here is the struggle taken up and made visible to everyone across this country.

And there are some in the conservative who feel like if they are more seen as an enforcement-only, and some who are really being seen as anti-immigrant and are trying to win the issue for the Republicans with that issue and that approach. And there are others in the more moderate wing of the party who I think understand that immigrants, again, have been a strong tradition of this country.

That you can utilize the strength and dynamic component that immigrants offer to this country, and see it as part of their future political base. So, there's a real struggle right now within those elements. And there are some in particular who are using this and carrying it as a banner against, I think, the Hispanic community. Tom Tancredo in Colorado, who sees this as a winning issue and isn't really interested in providing a solution in a comprehensive way.

Tavis: Whether you call him Bush's brain, or President Bush's top domestic advisor, or top advisor, period, by any other name he is Karl Rove, and we know who he is. Give me the short version on this issue of what Rove had to say. You invite him, he shows up. What's he say?

Murguia: Well actually, on this issue, President Bush and Karl Rove, who's worked with him on this strategy, have had an approach that we agree with on immigration, and that is we need a comprehensive solution. They have pushed back to a certain extent on the enforcement-only approach, which means to secure up our borders, and that's it. And Karl Rove gave a very positive message to our community that he understood, and President Bush recognized the importance of immigrants, and that we need a comprehensive solution.

So Karl Rove, on this issue, carried a very positive message, one that is consistent with the interests of our community, and one that especially highlighted their comprehensive approach. You have to deal with the future flow of immigrants in addition to security enforcement, and you have to deal with those folks who are here, and have been here making important contributions, and give them a pathway to citizenship.

Tavis: Let me ask perhaps an unfair question. And I don't know that you know the answer, but I'm curious. If anybody does, you should. (laughs) If the Republicans are divided on this issue, and President Bush and the Bush White House or aware, or certainly closer to where NCLR wants them to be on this issue, but their cohorts in Congress are not necessarily where you want them to be, when it comes to the midterm elections and the presidential elections of '08, what do you do? The President did what you wanted, but some folk in his party didn't. So what happens with the vote?

Murguia: Oh, it's very easy. We need to hold those individuals who are in the positions to make the difference on this issue accountable for their actions.

Tavis: So it's not a party thing, it's an individual thing.

Murguia: Oh, I think absolutely. We need to make sure, and that's part of our strategy, I think, going forward. In addition to continuing to seek a conference committee around the two bills that have been passed in the Senate and the House, and try to get some consensus that looks more like the Senate bill, which has a comprehensive approach, we need to be preparing ourselves, as we should anyway, to make sure that we are civically engaged.

We need to make sure that we're registering voters, mobilizing voters, and actually making sure they get to the polls on election day to send a very strong signal that if those folks who are in the position to do something about this issue that we believe is in the best interests of our community and our country, then we need to make sure that they get the message loud and clear on election day.

So for instance at our conference, we had a long day where we were naturalizing, taking folks through the process of naturalization, where if you weren't born in this country and you apply to be a citizenship, we were helping them with that process. And I think it's a responsibility for us to work on naturalization, but registration, and ultimately mobilizing people on election day. That's how we're gonna send the signal that we really need action on this issue, and have people accountable for that.

Tavis: You may have just started to comprehensively answer the question I wanted to ask, which is speaking of strategy, what is the strategy on the part of your community beyond the marches? Is that it?

Murguia: That is it. And the marches were important, and I think they sent a strong signal that the community and others outside of the community are unified on this comprehensive approach. And really, it was a response to what I believe was a provocation.

Tavis: Speaking of provocation, you don't think the marches were a provocation? You don't think the marches were in your face?

Murguia: No. Let me tell you, the marches, why did we have the marches? Because there was a bill passed in the House, led by Congressmen Sensenbrenner, that basically said the approach we're gonna take to this immigration issue is not only just to seal up our borders, which we appreciate security and enforcement, we understand that has to be part of the solution, but it went so far as to say that we're gonna criminalize, for the first time, anyone who's here with an undocumented status, and make felons out of them and anyone who tries to assist them.

And that, to me, is provocation. So the marches were really in response to folks who are out there every day, doing really hard work, really hard work, contributing to their communities and to the economy in important ways, and yet being told that we're gonna treat you like criminals. There's a natural reaction, and there's, I think, a reaction beyond our community, because we were joined by others, to then unify and say, you know what? That's not right. And those marches were a response to what I believe was that provocation.

Tavis: Let me ask you, in the few minutes I have left here, 'cause you made a very, I think, salient point at the beginning, which is that the immigration issue is sucking the air out of the room to discuss other things, as it has for the last 12 minutes in this conversation. (laughs) But in the two or three minutes I have left, what are some of the other issues that you'd like to get traction on, like to get some conversation on, move higher up on the American agenda, but you can't do it because of this issue.

Murguia: Well, education. Education is such a priority for not just the Hispanic community but for all communities. And we know that the more we can focus on models and approaches that can help, investments in early childhood education. Try to get universal preschool, or all-day kindergarten. Any number of segments of the education spectrum that we can address would be enormously helpful in getting focus around that.

Access to healthcare. Our healthcare system is in a crisis. We should be mobilizing all this energy around immigration around healthcare reform, or homeownership. That's another key to the American dream, beyond education. We should be trying to economically empower our communities, and making sure that we have access to assets. And everyone owning their own home is a real key to us transforming the economic empowerment of our community.

So, there's a number of issues, and we need to be able to talk about the strategies and the models and the approaches that would work, and really make that happen. And yet, we can't get past immigration, because people are using that as a barrier to other issues.

Tavis: Very quickly, one of the issues that came up in the session that I moderated was this issue, overstated or not, of tension between Black and Brown in inner cities across America. Your thought?

Murguia: Yeah, yeah. I think that there's a number of folks, and quite frankly, I think the media, and everyone knows the demographics in the Latino community. We are now the largest minority. I think the way some of that is portrayed in the media is, like, winners and losers. And obviously, we need to resist and reject that notion that just because there's a community that's larger, that all of a sudden, there's some sort of rank to that.

We need to look at where our common agendas are, and we have many with the African-American community, the Latino community, Asian, other minority communities, and really use that, those numbers to leverage advancement in those areas. But yet, there would be some, and there are real tensions in between the communities, because I think we still have to work at making sure we get to know each other better.

Even though oftentimes we end up side by side in so many venues, we still haven't connected, and we have to keep working at that to make sure that we're exploring that. But certainly at the national level and on down, we need to make sure that people aren't creating a wedge or divide us, and look at what are those agenda items that we have in common, and work together to try to advance that, and leverage our numbers together. And I think we have that opportunity, if we can get past some of these issues.

Tavis: Well, I'm pleased to know you, and I'm glad you came on the program.

Murguia: Thank you so much, Tavis, and thanks for being at the NCLR conference.

Tavis: It was my delight. Thank you very much, Janet.