Veronica StidventVeronica Stidvent, program director of the Hispanic Leadership Initiative at McCombs and a lecturer in the Department of Business, Government and Society, spoke to NPR’s Farai Chideya recently on the results of rapid growth of the Hispanic population in the U.S.

"The real impact is going to be felt as this cohort ages and get old enough to work, gets old enough to vote and – we’re hoping – goes to college,” said Stidvent, who also served as a special assistant to President George W. Bush.

Stidvent told NPR that Hispanics' influence will depend on two things – their eagerness to vote and the development of leaders to represent the community.

Addressing the controversial topic of documented and undocumented Latino labor, Stidvent says “I think at some point, this country is going to have to realize that our birthrate, like most developed countries, is fairly low. And so if you want to grow your economy, the way to grow an economy is to have more workers. And you need an immigrant labor force for that.”

She says the system implemented for immigrant labor needs to be “fair and safe." But the U.S. needs to “recognize the importance of immigrant labor to the future of this country, and come to embrace it and understand it.”

Read the full interview at NPR