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As a first generation Jewish American, I have witnessed firsthand Jewish immigrants who have come to this Nation in order to create a better life for themselves, their families, and future generations.

My parents came to the United States in the early years of this century as part of a wave of Russian Jewish immigrants seeking freedom and opportunity in the New World.

My own grandparents came to the United States as immigrants in 1912, and they lived for some years in Italian ghettos in New York. Most immigrant groups start in ghettos somewhere, and many of them never get out.

We are indeed a nation of immigrants. People who choose to come to America have always been one of our greatest sources of national vitality. They keep our economy strong and our communities dynamic. They are some of our greatest patriots.

Our nation is built upon a history of immigration, dating back to our first pioneers, the Pilgrims. For more than three centuries, we have welcomed generations of immigrants to our melting pot of hyphenated America: British-Americans; Italian-Americans; Irish-Americans; Jewish-Americans; Mexican-Americans; Chinese-Americans; Indian-Americans.

In my town, and especially in my area, there were people from everywhere: Algerians, Senegalese, French people, Asians, all kinds of immigrants and natives, and everyone circulated.

My grandfather was from outside of Moscow, and my grandmother, although some of her family were French, was from Odessa. They met as immigrants in New York in the early '20s. My mother's family came over from Ireland generations ago.

My parents were born and brought up in New York City. My father was trained as an electrical engineer, and my mother was an elementary school teacher. They were the children of Jewish immigrants who had come to the United States from England and Lithuania in the late 1800s.

In Sweden, I went to an English school, where there was a mishmash of people from all over the world. Some were diplomatic kids with a lot of money, some were ghetto kids who came up from the suburbs, and I grew up in between. There's a community of second generation immigrants, and I became part of that because I had an American father.