No American president has ever said this, and no American president ever will. Because I am impatient, I shall invent one who does.
My fellow Americans, I stand before you today, not as your president, not as the Commander in Chief, but as your dear friend, your best friend who really cares about you and must tell you something you do not want to hear. I will say it here today, because and only because I care deeply about America.
I stand here as someone who must remind us all today what it means to be American. If you will permit me into your living rooms, I shall speak my piece and take the consequences as they may befall me. I have kept quiet long enough. It is time that we heard the truth about what it means to be an American.
But first, let me dispel some myths.
It is NOT our language of English. It is not our culture, whatever that means. It not whiteness, blackness, latin-ness, chinese-ness, or any other -ness. We are not American because we drive big cars or trucks. We are not Americans because we love to buy. We are most certainly NOT American because we shop at Wal-mart. We are not American by virtue of keeping Mexicans from our shores, or waving the American flag, singing the national anthem, or pledging our allegiance. I could go on.
Do I need to go on?
The things that make us American are the intangibles, not how we look, or speak, nor what we have, acquire, or even what we build. What makes us American, my fellow Americans, is the resolute fact that we have a willingness to fail, that we have the opportunity to fail.
To be an American means to risk failure, and to fail not once, or twice, but repeatedly. Our failure rate, is directly proportional to our forward progress. Show me someone adverse to risk and I will show you someone who has done nothing, and will never do anything. He is happy, complacent, and content – content in his mediocrity. He is a useless sort, and we do not want him here in America.
Unfortunately, we are beginning to grow more and more of these types right here on our own shores. We are happy. We have lots of nice things. My fellow Americans, I have nice things. You have nice things. We enjoy a standard of living the far exceeds the majority of the world. That is great and wonderful to be sure, but I see some slippage. We, my fellow Americans, have become risk averse. We ask that others assume the risk. When others come and are willing to risk death, poverty, and discrimination, we malign them for they remind us of what we have lost. It is our shame that causes us to call out to them, ‘Go home, you dirty immigrants,’ for we have forgotten our proud dirty immigrant past. Shame on us. Shame on me.
We shall not dishonor our ancestors in that fashion. I shall not dishonor my ancestors in that fashion.
We Americans have lost the will to live, the hunger that made America great. We have lost the willingness to put it all on the line.
What does this American president propose? I will tell you. I want immigrants that are fed up with tyranny, poverty, sickness, despots, corruption, death and mayhem to pack their bags and get to America. Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Just get here.
And I do mean all of you. No quotas, no limits, no restrictions.
I want these immigrants to come to our shores, for the opportunity to earn a living, working hard, and gaining a purpose in this life. They are no longer cattle to be lead to a slaughter. They are to be no longer seen as simply the listless masses upon whom tin-pot dictators reap their blessings in the form of death, persecution, and abject poverty.
We Americans see you, people of the world, as human capital. Whereas others see you as drains on government pension funds, a lot to be taken care of or robbed or just a burden, we in America see your value. You are not a drain, you are an asset.
You are a national treasure.
And we have forgotten it, my fellow Americans, we have forgotten to treasure our immigrants. I ask, can a person have too much treasure?
Every life that wants to produce, that wants to be useful, because that is all any of us could ever ask, shall have that opportunity right here, right here in this great immigrant land of ours.
I can hear it now, my fellow Americans, ‘They will bring down wages, they will subvert our way of life. We cannot absorb so many.’
Historically Americans believed that economic progress and prosperity were a result of the free land to our west. When things got tough, we opened up more land, and folks rolled up their sleeves, moved and worked that land to bring more riches to America. The fact of free land was a compelling reason for Americans to believe our nation was wealthy. I ask, however, what good is land without human hands to work it? Franklin D. Roosevelt once said:
We are not able to invite the immigration from Europe to share our endless plenty. We are now providing a drab living for our own people.
Which is, of course, a logical fallacy and begs the question, why should we believe that immigrants come to share endless plenty. That land could have lain bare for another thousand years without putting a single cent in a bank account, happily. The immigrants were the source of that plenty during the years of westward expansion, for it was their hands that cultivated the soil, that shaped the landscape, and caused it to yield untold riches. Immigrants come to create endless plenty.
It was immigrants, my fellow Americans. They were the riches.
Let me address the former criticism of wages. I hope immigrants do lower wages. Lower wages get people off their couches. Lower wages stimulate new thinking. If we have to compete with lower wages, we have got to think of ways to cut costs, innovate, or fail. That’s the American way. And two, I ask, what IS the American way if its not to re-purpose international assets to our benefit. Let me paint a tiny picture of what I’m talking about.
Say, I am an African dictator and I am robbing my people blind. I am taxing what little they have to build myself palaces and buy cars and support my harems of women. I am a small-minded fool and shall soon be parted from my wealth.
Half my country then leaves. They take up residence in America where that first generation works happily in menial labor jobs and earns more in a day than they did in a whole month or year in their country. Fast forward to their children’s generation, educated, hard working, and born of a spirit that there are so many possibilities. These people will take us to scientific greatness. They will build better cars. They will build better buildings. They will become amazing educators, thinkers, business people, you name it. They do not complain. They do not whine. They do not sue. They are just thankful that they are not dying, starving in some nameless ditch in some forgotten land. They wake up every day, thanking their god, that they have had this opportunity. They revere their lives. They revere our land. They revere their kind neighbors. This my friends, is paradise, an immigrant paradise. All they need is a chance.
Meanwhile our little African dictator takes a peek from afar, sees the riches upon which he had sat and covered with excrement. It was, in fact, a pile of gold, a pile of gold that far outstripped the production of even his biggest gold and diamond mines. What was he thinking? A fool he is.
And what should we be thinking. How can we NOT absorb such riches. It is a windfall. It is a boon. We should dance and sing and make merry for our good fortune. We seized half of a country’s riches and never had to fire a single bullet. Genghis Khan would have been befuddled by such a brilliant scheme.
Is there ever too much good fortune?
So come here. Come and bring to us your enthusiasm. We will give you a chance to succeed. We will give you a chance to fail. But you can pick yourself up and try something else. Because in America you make your own destiny as you see it.
And, my fellow Americans, they are going to make us uncomfortable. Change is tough. They will challenge our ideas. I say then, we will get over it and we must stop whining. We must learn from them – learn how we used to be and start taking risks, thankful for every single day that we have in this great land of ours.
I thank you for listening, my fellow Americans.