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Charles and joining us is jonathon alter. we were just talking to congressman gutierrez. in the big perspective, how important is this immigration decision? >> i think it's very important politically, not just legally in terms of human rights. it's politically important becaused latino vote is so critical in in election. really, in some ways it's the whole ball game. in president obama can get up in the high 60% in terms of the latino vote with a strong turnout, he will win this election. if he can't, he will likely lose the election. the question coming out of this case is whether it will fur...

Decision. the question is how far can the states go in helps ing to enfor that? that didn't deal with this question still in the courts about whether this law encouraging police officers to engage in racial profiling and whether that's unconstitutional. that's just in the early stages, so it's going to be another couple of years before that's sorted out. >> we have that, and we're still waiting for health care. pete, what's the status of that? >> we don't know. we may find out in a few minutes what the other decision days will be this week. we'll know whether if there's two or one decision day...

Are high latino populations, a swing of 3 or 4 percentage points could turn this election. >> the latino vote has always been under it's potential, as often the case with new immigrant groups. it's grown substantially. a lot of latinos sought citizenship in the '90s and 2 0 2000, and they're a growing group in the electorate. the question is do they mobilize to grow to be a significant portion of the electorate? you know, to go back to these twin cases of arizona and the health care bill, we have until the conservative courts came along since the new deal what legal scholars call the new deal ...

Center in vermont that takes queeries from local police officers around the country when they arrest someone and want to know about their immigration status. so it's kind of hard to argue that that's at odds with a federal scheme. one other thing. there's a federal immigration law that says nothing can interfere with the police officer's ability to check on the immigration status of people. what the justice department argued is that by placing a priority on checking the legal status of anyone, that is going to throw a monkey wrench into the federal scheme, which is trying to concentrate on peo...

Harmful to mitt romney because then, remember, with the dream act question, that affects younyoung latinos that can't vote. many families are recent immigrants who can't vote. this provision, this show me your papers provision affects all latinos potentially and could potentially have a much more profound impact on their attitudes toward what their lives will be like moving forward if this does become the law of the land and spreads to different legislatures. >> e.j., i think jonathan makes a good point. this is not something that happens today and we talk about it for two or three days and it...