President Obama Speaks at Naturalization Ceremony

The anti-immigration rhetoric has been vociferous in recent months, largely emanating from presidential candidacies. The usual course of discussion over immigration in recent years has been policymaking and legislation for unauthorized migrants. There are 11-12 million unauthorized migrants in the United States. They either entered the country without authorization or they entered legally but remained past their legal limit. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans programs that President Obama initiated through executive order have sought to address immigration issues through the executive branch. The legislative branch has not been able to agree on comprehensive immigration reform.

In contrast to proclamations of immigration bans and restrictions, President Obama spoke at a naturalization ceremony in Washington DC, where people from 25 different countries took the oath to become American citizens. President Obama was there to commemorate the journey that those individuals had to take to become American citizens, on the 224^th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. The president had many remarkable statements about immigration and immigrants:

Just about every nation in the world, to some extent, admits immigrants. But there’s something unique about America. We don’t simply welcome new immigrants, we don’t simply welcome new arrivals — we are born of immigrants. That is who we are. Immigration is our origin story. And for more than two centuries, it’s remained at the core of our national character; it’s our oldest tradition. It’s who we are. It’s part of what makes us exceptional.

The first refugees were the Pilgrims themselves — fleeing religious persecution, crossing the stormy Atlantic to reach a new world where they might live and pray freely. Eight signers of the Declaration of Independence were immigrants. And in those first decades after independence, English, German, and Scottish immigrants came over, huddled on creaky ships, seeking what Thomas Paine called “asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty…

We can never say it often or loudly enough: Immigrants and refugees revitalize and renew America.