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Nearly one-fifth of our fellow citizens are Latino. They are families who are impacted by our education system, by our economy, by our healthcare delivery, and by every policy we make here in Washington.

If you apologize to me, I look at it as an insult because my parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, like every other culture out there, did exactly what they needed to do. They worked hard, and they became part of the American way, and they earned the respect of Americans across the board. We need to do the same.

Yes, I'm a patriotic person. For these people who disgrace the American way and burn our flag and do all of these things... I say, don't live here and disgrace my country. Go live in the Middle East and see how you like it.

I think the biggest insult, the worst way you can offend a Mexican, is to insult their mother. A mother is the most sacred thing in life.

Any Mexican, would recognise that Mexico was abused, undervalued and downgraded in international circles, most of all by the United States.

There are those who wrap themselves in flags and blow the tinny trumpet of patriotism as a means of fooling the people.

I say if you are here illegally and are displaying and waving the Mexican flag, you should go back to Mexico and fly that flag there.

There's something about my Mexican-American heritage... I'm proud of it.

It may be the optimist in me, but I think America has a uniquely powerful and capacious glue internally. The American identity has always been ethnically and religiously neutral, so within one generation you have Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Jamaican-Americans - they feel American. It's a huge success story.