Speech #680075831

I am not unmindful. Mr. President. of the debt this tepublic owes the immigrant. Adventurers discovered America and exploited it for quick riches. but the immigrant came and conquered the American wilderness and built a oine.i a church. and a school. therebylaying deep and strong the foundations of a future liberty that is the last hope of tle world. The sons and sons sons of this pioneer immigrant. aided by other immigrants of like aspiration and purpose won our independence and fashioned our institutions. Yet other Immigrants of like purpose and stamina penetrated the interior and lecamne the vanguard of civilization in iour great central valleys. and still other immigrants scaled our western no untains an(1 peopled our western coasts. But. Mr. President. the same fidelity to historic truth that leads us to acknowledge our debt to the imiaigcant teaches us that these immigrantsthese American pioners--wele actuated by a comlon purpose and a common zeal io -I( Up Ia new civilization in a new land. a civilization peculiar to the new land. that they set up new institutions. tlht they cast off all alleglance to tle prejudices and restrictive cnstoina of their alien homelands. The same historic fact. Mr. President. instructs us that these immigrants were of western and northern European stocks and that during our earlier years of free and unrestricted Immigration the preponderance of our inunigration camie from these same source lands. u)ring those years the process of assimilation and Amierlianizal Ion of the alien was relatively simple. The immigrant came seeking a home and an opportunity and citizenship in a new world that pioneer Immigrants of his own blood had founded. He did not come to swarm the " foreign quarter" of alt overcrowded American city. But.