Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza, expressed her satisfaction with the bipartisan proposal on immigration reform announced Monday, during her appearance on Andrea Mitchell Reports.
“We’re thrilled and delighted that we’ve seen such a strong start to 2013,” she said on Monday. “It makes me feel pretty confident that 2013 will be the year of immigration reform.”
Some proposals the immigration overhaul would offer include, allowing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, visas, guest worker programs and would call for more security on the border.
She credited the Hispanic and immigrant communities with bringing immigration reform into the spotlight with their heavy participation in the “civic engagement process” this past November, and was pleased to see that the current effort showed signs of bipartisanship in Congress.
When NBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked Murguia whether the bipartisanship could help bridge the divide between the GOP and the Hispanic population, she expressed her optimism.
“This is a very important step in the right direction,” she said. “There’s no question that the Republican Party needs to think about rebranding itself with the Latino community. This effort is going to be a very important effort to do that and I think it’s going to require movement on a number of issues.”
Murguia repeated that the GOP must rebrand itself and called the election “transformational in terms of the message that Hispanic voters sent,” because immigration now has more support from the American people.
She also commended Sen. Marco Rubio and other Republican leaders for recognizing that the GOP needed to change its policies concerning Hispanic and immigration reform.
“I think we’re going to see, for the first time, a real effort to achieve that in this year, and we’re going to be moving in a direction as Hispanic voters and constituencies to hold those members accountable,” she said.
Cathy Finkler