American Committee on Italian Migration Remarks to Participants in the Washington Symposium.

THE PRESIDENT. Bishop Swanstrom and Father Cogo, Congressman Peyser, distinguished representatives of the Italian American Community:

I'm very delighted to have you here. This is a wonderful day for me. We've had an opportunity within the last couple of hours to recognize a few outstanding Americans who have been given the American President's Medal of Freedom. This is done very rarely in our country, and it recognizes those people among us who have contributed with a special talent to the greatness of our country.

Today, I want to recognize an entire group of people, some of whom were never singled out individually for fame or for recognition, but who mean just as much to our country. We have great strength in our Nation—our agricultural productivity, our energy supplies, enormous educational system, technological advances—but our greatest strength, as you know, lies in the dynamism of America's people.

We've time and again encountered extraordinary questions, difficult obstacles to overcome and to face, challenges that have been too much for other people to meet successfully. And time and again Americans all together, united, courageous, determined, have prevailed. There's an important basis for this national strength derived from the people's dynamic approach to life.

First of all, we are a nation of immigrants. Our ancestors came here from many countries, many of us even as refugees coming here seeking a greater degree of freedom to worship as we chose, to raise our families as we prefer, and a better opportunity in life. We brought with us our own values, our customs, our strengths, our religious faith, our commitment to our family, a new commitment to new communities. And we brought something else, all of us, the hope for a better life, for those who first came here and our family and for their descendents now until this moment and also a better, hopeful life for children and our grandchildren who will come behind us.

For more than two centuries America has breathed life into these hopes and aspirations that were clutched within the hearts of individual immigrants to our Nation. We began in 1976 [1776] as the one nation on Earth—the only one so far as I know—that made the pursuit of happiness a fundamental goal. We've invigorated that ambition for happiness with every succeeding generation. America is unique in this way. Unlike all the other nations on Earth, we're not united by either a single culture or a single place of national origin or by a single ethnic identity nor by a single language.

What unites a nation is an idea. It's the idea of what a free and equal people can accomplish together and what a free society can mean as an example to the rest of the world. It was Philip Mazzei, a contemporary of Thomas Jefferson, who gave shape to this idea. He was the one, an early Virginian, who having come to our country from Italy, as you may have guessed, drafted our most fundamental principle, that all men are created equal. He's the one who originated that thought.

It was his words that found their way into Thomas Jefferson's mind, into our Declaration of Independence, and into our history. "All men are created equal." It's symbolic that this ringing phrase that every American knows should have been drafted by an American of Italian heritage. Throughout our history, as you well know—and I'm sure no one here would disagree—Italian Americans have continued to contribute their efforts and their values, their talent, their commitment to every endeavor of American human life.

I'm happy to say that the United States will honor Philip Mazzei and his contribution in a stamp that will be issued in October of this year. It's a recognition that's long overdue.

We live in time of challenge; we live in a time of difficulty, a time of change, even a time of danger. It's important for us to understand the roots of our national strength and the roots of our ideals and the roots of our principles and the roots of our hopes. We need to know who we are and what we stand for as a people.

Since 1776 our Nation has been a great hope of people who suffered from religious persecution, from political repression, from economic deprivation. It still is. For 200 years our Nation has been a refuge for people committed to life and to liberty and to the pursuit of happiness, and it still is. The American Committee on Italian American Migration has helped to keep this American ideal a reality.

This committee on Italian migration has helped families to become reunited. It's helped immigrants to adjust to the American way of life. It's helped thousands and thousands of Italian immigrants to learn to speak English, to find jobs, to find a home, to learn how to vote, even to learn how to pay taxes. [Laughter] And for those who are new in our country, your work makes all the difference in the world—the difference between loneliness and a sense of being loved, the difference between despair and hope, the difference between misery and happiness, the difference between disappointment and success.

You fought long and hard to end the unfair system by which people were excluded from our country on the basis of specific national quotas. Your efforts helped to bring about this tremendously important legislation of 1965 abolishing these national quotas. Italian Americans, not coincidentally, have been the prime beneficiaries of this historic legislation. And as the benefits have gone to Italians who wanted to come here, those benefits obviously have been accrued by the United States of America.

During the past decade, the last 10 years, Italians were among the three nationalities, top nationalities, who immigrated to this country. But all Americans have benefited from this landmark legislation in social progress for our country. We have long believed that our country is the greatest on Earth. And with your help I am convinced that our Nation will be even greater in the future. Thank God for you and for the Italian Americans who provide the strength for our country. Thank you.

BISHOP SWANSTROM. Mr. President, I just want to take a moment to thank you very sincerely on behalf of this representation of our membership drawn from all over the country. As you know, we're primarily interested in the migration of Italians, but we're equally interested in the migration of all people who feel that they can find a new life in the United States, refugees and migrants, and we're here to examine what's being put into the new law that Congress and yourself are proposing. And we just want you to know that, like yourself, we're interested. We feel that the family is the basic unit of our society, and we're particularly interested in that part of the legislation that provides for the reunion of families.

So, we pledge our cooperation. We're sure, under your leadership, the necessary reforms that are needed in our immigration law will take place. And so we thank you very kindly for your words of encouragement.

THE PRESIDENT. I want to come by and shake hands with those that I missed earlier. But in just a moment I'm going to have to leave here. And you might want to walk out just beyond the hedge and watch the helicopter take off. I go to Andrews Air Force Base and then take Air Force One. I'll be going to Florida and to the State of Washington and, probably, to Nebraska before I come back home. I'm sure I'll see Italian Americans everywhere I go.