I used to have a sort of soft spot for Huckabee. He seemed to have a genuinely saintly streak, which caused him to defend illegal immigrants and give pardons to criminals who were perhaps a little less rehabilitated than he had imagined.

My name, my origins, my background and my experiences are what leveraged my success. The angle of the immigrant, through which I examined the reality in France, distinguished me.

The rich countries also contribute to the brain drain from developing countries by more willingly accepting people with higher skills. These are people who could have contributed more to the development of their own countries than unskilled immigrants, had they remained in their home countries.

Chinese immigrant: “Americans make a mere practice of loving justice.”

Respect to the Indians, because the very idea of America belongs to immigrants.

A city full of immigrants, without a soul still behind its glass buildings and concrete highways, where success is measured in millions of bolivars, Caracas does not have time to recognize talents that are not consecrated in advance – Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza.

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.

And in a response to an interrogator from the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1948, Chaplin said,

The more you can increase fear of drugs, crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all of the people.

America isn’t Congress. America isn’t Washington. America is the striving immigrant who starts a business, or the mom who works two low-wage jobs to give her kid a better life. America is the union leader and the CEO who put aside their differences to make the economy stronger.

The immigration issue is, I recognize, one that generates a lot of passion, but it does not make sense for us to want to push talent out.

All of us take offense to anyone who reaps the rewards of living in America without taking on the responsibilities of living in America. And undocumented immigrants who desperately want to embrace those responsibilities see little option but to remain in the shadows, or risk their families being torn apart.

Immigrants aren’t the reason wages haven’t gone up enough; those decisions are made in the boardrooms that too often put quarterly earnings over long-term returns.

Fixing a broken immigration system. Protecting our kids from gun violence. Equal pay for equal work, paid leave, raising the minimum wage. All these things still matter to hardworking families; they are still the right thing to do; and I will not let up until they get done.

My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.