Immigration

I learned about our kind of democracy from my father and I learned about our obligation to each other from him and my mother. They ask only for a chance to work and to make the world better for their children. And they they asked to be protected and those main moments when they would not be able to protect themselves. This nation and this nation's government did that for them.

That struggle to live with dignity is the real story of the shining city, and it's a story, ladies and gentlemen, that I didn't read in a book or learn in a classroom. I saw it and lived it. Like many of you, I watched a small man with thick calluses on both his hands work 15 and 16 hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet. A man who came here, uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example.