Former Calif. Governors Pete Wilson and Gray Davis on immigration reform

President Barack Obama today declared that “now is the time” to fix the nation’s broken immigration system.

In a speech in Las Vegas, Obama praised the bipartisan work between the White House and a group of Senators on taking steps toward putting millions of illegal immigrants on a pathway to citizenship, cracking down on businesses that employ people illegally and tightening security at the borders.

Long before Washington’s latest efforts on immigration reform, the state of California was ground zero in the debate over what to do about the millions of illegal immigrants in the state.

Republican Pete Wilson was governor of California in the 1990s when the issue had reached a political turning point. Democrat Gray Davis succeeded Wilson. They both joined KCRW’s Steve Chiotakis to discuss the path to fixing the U.S. immigration system.