commitment to delivering over 5 million illegal
immigrants in the US from the grip of deportation.
This was communicated via a live broadcast that was
not aired on major News channel in the US.
The video of Obama 2014 immigration reform
speech has been uploaded to YouTube and other
online news channel.
Watch the full video below and see the transcript
after.
President Barack Obama Immigration Reform
Speech 2014 Full Transcript
Are we a nation that tolerates the hypocrisy of a
system where workers who pick our fruit and make
our beds never have a chance to get right with the
law? Or are we a nation that gives them a chance to
make amends, take responsibility, and give their kids
a better future? Are we a nation that accepts the
cruelty of ripping children from their parents' arms?
Or are we a nation that values families, and works to
keep them together?
Are we a nation that educates the world's best and
brightest in our universities, only to send them home
to create businesses in countries that compete
against us? Or are we a nation that encourages them
to stay and create jobs, businesses, and industries
right here in America? That's what this debate is all
about.
We need more than politics as usual when it comes
to immigration; we need reasoned, thoughtful,
compassionate debate that focuses on our hopes, not
our fears. I know the politics of this issue are tough.
But let me tell you why I have come to feel so
strongly about it. Over the past few years, I have
seen the determination of immigrant fathers who
worked two or three jobs, without taking a dime from
the government, and at risk at any moment of losing
it all, just to build a better life for their kids. I've seen
the heartbreak and anxiety of children whose
mothers might be taken away from them just
because they didn't have the right papers. I've seen
the courage of students who, except for the
circumstances of their birth, are as American as Malia
or Sasha; students who bravely come out as
undocumented in hopes they could make a
difference in a country they love. These people our
neighbors, our classmates, our friends they did not
come here in search of a free ride or an easy life.
They came to work, and study, and serve in our
military, and above all, contribute to America's
success.
Tomorrow, I'll travel to Las Vegas and meet with
some of these students, including a young woman
named Astrid Silva. Astrid was brought to America
when she was four years old. Her only possessions
were a cross, her doll, and the frilly dress she had on.
When she started school, she didn't speak any
English. She caught up to the other kids by reading
newspapers and watching PBS, and became a good
student. Her father worked in landscaping. Her
mother cleaned other people's homes. They wouldn't
let Astrid apply to a technology magnet school for
fear the paperwork would out her as an
undocumented immigrant so she applied behind
their back and got in.
Still, she mostly lived in the shadows until her
grandmother, who visited every year from Mexico,
passed
away, and she couldn't travel to the funeral without
risk of being found out and deported. It was around
that time she decided to begin advocating for herself
and others like her, and today, Astrid Silva is a
college student working on her third degree. Are we a
nation that kicks out a striving, hopeful immigrant
like Astrid or are we a nation that finds a way to
welcome her in? Scripture tells us that we shall not
oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a
stranger.
We were strangers once, too. My fellow Americans,
we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We
were strangers once, too. And whether our forebears
were strangers who crossed the Atlantic, or the
Pacific, or the Rio Grande, we are here only because
this country welcomed them in, and taught them
that to be an American is about something more
than what we look like, or what our last names are, or
how we worship. What makes us Americans is our
shared commitment to an ideal that all of us are
created equal, and all of us have the chance to make
of our lives what we will.
That's the country our parents and grandparents and
generations before them built fo rus. That's the
legacy we must leave for those who are yet to come.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless this country
we love
Posted By David Aniemeka
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