Political Quotes

“let me begin by congratulating Chloe Kim, a first-generation American who won an Olympic Gold Medal for the United States in the women's halfpipe snowboarding event this week. Her father, Jong Jin Kim emigrated from South Korea to the United States in 1982, became a dishwasher at a fast-food restaurant, studied engineering at El Camino College after working those low-skilled jobs, and then became an engineer. He left his engineering job to support his daughter's snowboarding ambitions so he could drive her 5\1/2\ hours to the mountain for training. Congratulations to Chloe and to her entire family. You make the United States proud. Madam President, the whole debate we are now undertaking over immigration and the Dreamers has become somewhat personal for me because it has reminded me, in a very strong way, that I and my brother are first-generation Americans. We are the sons of an immigrant who came to this country at the age of 17 without a nickel in his pocket, a young man who was a high school dropout, who did not know one word of English, and who had no particular trade. A few years ago, my brother and I and our families went to the small town where he came from, and it just stunned me, the kind of courage he showed and millions of other people show leaving their homeland to come to a very different world, in many cases, without money, without knowledge of the language.…”