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We must honor our country's tradition of openness and continue to welcome new immigrants.

We are a nation of immigrants, a quilt of many colors, and we've managed over more than two centuries to create a way of life that allows for a reasonable degree of upward mobility, that prizes individual liberty, promotes freedom of religion and genuinely values equal rights for all citizens.

We need to remain a nation that doesn't just welcome but that celebrates legal immigrants who come here seeking to pursue the American Dream.

I fully recognize we need to improve the path to citizenship, just as we need to value the hard work of folks who become American citizens legally.

I do feel, in a sense, the rules of engagement for citizenship has changed, and we must encourage other people to speak up and to take action.

Millions of us, myself included, go back generations in this country, with ancestors who put in the painstaking work to become citizens. So we don't like the notion that anyone might get a free pass to American citizenship.

I respect those who openly advocate for unlimited immigration to the United States. Open borders is an intellectually coherent, defensible position.

Our immigration system is a broken system that needs to be fixed. We need reform that provides hardworking people of good character with a real path towards citizenship.

In a world of inhumanity, war and terrorism, American citizenship is a very precious possession.

America is this incredible mosaic of immigrants, so people really want to be anchored in some kind of culture as well as the one they are living in.