"Going back to the discussion we were..." - Quote by Barack Obama

Going back to the discussion we were having about immigration reform, some of the most challenging discussions I've had are with activists who essentially would argue that any immigrant from Central America, let's say, who gets here to this country should be allowed to stay because their country is dangerous, their country is poor, and the opportunities for that mom and that kid are much greater here, and why would you send them back?
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More by Barack Obama

“[Young people] are showing enormous and entrepreneurship and working with each other across borders.”
— Barack Obama
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I, therefore, intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt.”
— Barack Obama
“We know that every father has a personal responsibility to do right by their kids - to encourage them to turn off the video games and pick up a book; to teach them the difference between right and wrong; to show them through our own example the value in treating one another as we wish to be treated. And most of all, to play an active and engaged role in their lives.”
— Barack Obama

More on Immigration

“[E]very Man who comes among us, and takes up a piece of Land, becomes a Citizen, and by our Constitution has a Voice in Elections, and a share in the Government of the Country.”
— Benjamin Franklin
“Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules. That these rules shall be as equal as prudential considerations will admit, will certainly be the aim of our legislatures, general and particular.”
— Thomas Jefferson
“I was also going to give a graduation speech in Arizona this weekend. But with my accent, I was afraid they would try to deport me.”
— Arnold Schwarzenegger

More on Reform

“I do not act, and people become reformed by themselves.”
— Lao Tzu
“My overriding belief is that it is always possible for criminals to improve and that by its very finality the death penalty contradicts this.”
— Dalai Lama
“In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was once the act of a single man; every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson