Editor’s Note: The following are remarks by President Obama at the Congressional Hispanic Institute’s Annual Awards Gal ON September 15, 2010..
Thank you to Senator Menendez, and to the Chairwoman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Congresswoman Velázquez, for those extraordinary introductions, but more importantly for the outstanding work that you do each and every day. Please give them a huge round of applause. Thank you to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute for inviting us this evening. Michelle and I are thrilled to be here with so many friends to kick off Hispanic Heritage Month.
I want to thank all the members of Congress, the local elected officials, the CHCI alumni, and all who work day in and day out to advance the Hispanic community and America as a whole.
I also want to acknowledge and thank all of the outstanding Latino leaders serving across my administration because I am proud that the number of Latinos I’ve nominated to Senate-confirmed positions at this point far exceeds any administration in history. And I’m especially proud that a whole bunch of them are Latinas. And as I’ve said before, one of my proudest moments of my presidency was the day Justice Sonia Sotomayor swore an oath -- and ascended to our nation’s highest court, and sparked new dreams for countless young girls all across America.
Now, some of you may remember I first joined you here two years ago, as a candidate for this office. And we spoke then about how, after years of failed policies here in Washington, after decades of putting off the toughest challenges, we had finally reached a tipping point -- a point where the fundamental promise of America was at risk.
We talked about how these challenges impacted the Latino community, but also about how they’re bigger than any one community. I said then that if a young child is stuck in an overcrowded and underperforming school, it doesn’t matter if she is black or white or Latino, she is our child, and we have a responsibility to her. That if millions of Latinos end up in the emergency room because they don’t have health care, it’s not just a problem for one community, it’s a problem for all of America. When millions of immigrants toil in the shadows of our society, that’s not just a Latino problem, that
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