Jan. 15 Democratic debate transcript

Williams: Senator Edwards, in touching on immigration here, let's go to something that a lot of people have found to be a disconnect between the Democratic Party and majorities of voters in a lot of states.

What would be the problem with English as an official language, as a bedrock requirement of citizenship?

Former Sen. Edwards:  Well, at least from my perspective, what we need to be doing is we need comprehensive immigration reform. We need to create a path for citizenship for 11 million to 14 million who are here who are undocumented we need to give them a real chance to earn -- I'm not for amnesty, but I am for being able to earn American citizenship.

Williams: But what about speaking the language?

Former Sen. Edwards:  I'm about to get to that.
I think that a couple of the requirements, in order to be able to earn American citizenship, are, first, if you came here illegally, we can't pretend it didn't happen. We are a country of laws and we believe in enforcement of those laws. So we have to show recognition of having violated the law, and that means payment of a fine.

Second, I think if you want to become an American citizen and earn American citizenship, you should learn to speak English.

Now, I think that we should help with that process. We should help make sure that those who are living here, and they're not English-speaking as their first language, get a chance to actually learn English.

But I think that should be a requirement for becoming an American citizen.

Williams: Tim Russert?

Russert: Senator Clinton, one of your pollsters was quoted in The New Yorker magazine as saying this: "The Hispanic voter has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates."

Does that represent the view of your campaign?

Sen. Clinton:  No, he was making a historical statement. And, obviously, what we're trying to do is to bring America together so that everybody feels like they're involved and they have a stake in the future.

This is a black/brown debate. We haven't actually talked about black/brown issues -- I regret that. And I think that we have a lot that we can do together.

You know, Tavis Smiley's "Covenant" is a great way to start.
There's a lot that we should be doing. I've worked with many of the Latino groups, over many years. We've got work on education and health care.

The agenda for America is the agenda for African-Americans and for Hispanics. And we need to merge that and we need to have a political system where people feel like they can vote for anybody because we're all on the same page; we're all going to make progress together.

But I wanted to follow up, quickly, on something that...

Russert: Let me ask Senator Obama. Do you believe there's a history of a decision, where Latino voters will not vote for a black candidate?

Sen. Obama:  Not in Illinois. They all voted for me. And so... You know, if this is being asked in the context of my candidacy, one of the things that I know is that, when Latino voters know of my commitment to them and the work that I've done for years, then they gravitate toward my candidacy.

We were talking earlier about immigration reform.
I think that John and myself and Hillary may agree on the broad outlines of where we need to go, but two years ago I stood with Ted Kennedy and John McCain and took on this tough issue, and have consistently been involved in making sure that we've got the kind of comprehensive plan that makes us a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.

That's the kind of leadership that I've shown. And when Latino voters read or hear about that leadership, then they know that they're going to have an advocate even if it's politically tough.

And I think that's, you know, that's the real test of leadership -- not when it's easy, not when the things poll well, but how you do when you've got a contentious issue like how we solve this immigration problem. That's an area where I've consistently stepped up.

Williams: Time is up. E-mail question, Natalie Morales.