Transcript of White House Naturalization Ceremony for Servicemembers

"All of you did something profound:  You chose to serve.  You put on the uniform of a country that was not yet fully your own. ...  We say it so often, we sometimes forget what it means -- we are a nation of immigrants.  Unless you are one of the first Americans, a Native American, we are all descended from folks who came from someplace else -- whether they arrived on the Mayflower or on a slave ship, whether they came through Ellis Island or crossed the Rio Grande.  Immigrants signed their names to our Declaration and helped win our independence.  Immigrants helped lay the railroads and build our cities, calloused hand by calloused hand.  Immigrants took up arms to preserve our union, to defeat fascism, and to win a Cold War.  Immigrants and their descendants helped pioneer new industries and fuel our Information Age, from Google to the iPhone.  So the story of immigrants in America isn’t a story of "them," it’s a story of "us."  It’s who we are.  And now, all of you get to write the next chapter." - President Barack Obama, July 4, 2012.