Thank you, thank you so much. I am so proud of Janet. You know, Janet Murguia has done a wonderful job already, being the new president of NCLR and I know from her work and service at the White House, she’s going to continue to serve you well. A history of service, a future of impact—that sums up Janet. And I am delighted to be introduced by her.

I am also so excited to have seen the plans for the new building. I don’t know where Raoul is, but 30 years ago, it would have been a little far-fetched for many of us who have known him for that long to imagine that there would be a building three blocks from the White House bearing his name, his imprint, his hopes and dreams for the future, that I know awaits this organization. So congratulations Raoul for a lifetime of service and a well-deserved honor with the naming of this building.

I also want to thank Monica Lozano and the other members of the Board who work so hard. I know that you all are involved on a daily basis in making sure NCLR just continues to grow and have an even greater impact, not just on the Latino community, but on America. And that’s what I believe is important, to bring together the energy, the imagination, the creativity, the hard work of so many of you throughout the country who are on the front lines of improving education, of providing healthcare, of creating job opportunities, all of that work which has gone on for so many years, which is now finally taking its rightful place in our nation’s capital.

I was delighted to see the mayor of Philadelphia here, Mayor John Street. Thank you for coming to this important conference. And my friend Governor Aníbal Acevedo from Puerto Rico: he and I worked together when he was the Puerto Rican representative to the United States Congress. And I was delighted to be here when Secretary Spellings also gave you the report about the continuing improvement in young children. That’s very heartening. I’m very happy about that. The problem is that as our children get older, they get more influences from the outside. They don’t maybe listen to us the way they should. Then the scores start going down.

So we’ve got our work cut out for us to make sure all these little children who are reading better, who are learning English better, who are performing on these tests better, grow up to be teenagers who are doing the same thing. And I’ll have more to say about that in a minute.

But I’m delighted that I am able to join you once again, as I did back in1998. That seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it? But of course, it’s hardly any time at all. The older I get, it seems, the faster it goes. I remember very well the opportunity to be with you, and that time also, it was in Philadelphia.

And what an appropriate place. Because for many of us as we look back on American history, Philadelphia is the birthplace of the American dream.

You know, just think, a few blocks away from here, some very visionary men were drafting the Declaration of Independence, creating an entirely new kind of government, trying to determine what this new government would be founded on. And really what they decided, I think it would be fair to say, came to be called the American Dream. Because they believed, as we believe, that we are, each of us, men and women alike, endowed by God with the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There had never been a government before that had ever said, every individual has the spark of their creator and every individual has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Now, it has taken us a long time to make the progress we should to fulfill that dream for many, many of our people. But without the dream, we could have never made the progress. And since our country’s founding, Hispanic Americans from missionaries and admirals to Nobel laureates and astronauts have not only been seeking the American Dream for themselves, but helping to preserve and expand it for others.

And over the past 229 years since that dream was given language and life here in Philadelphia, we have learned that our country is at its best when we work together to make sure that the American Dream is accessible to all who are willing to work hard and be responsible for themselves and their families. That’s why La Raza has always been so important. Because for 40 years, you have been working to break down the barriers that too often wall people off from the American Dream. And I am grateful for that work. It is not finished, however.

As I look around this great convention hall, I know how many people are literally living and embodying the American Dream here today, people who have done so much better than their families ever could have done themselves, but because of commitment to education and sacrifice, you have fulfilled their dreams as well as yours. We heard a minute ago about Janet’s family, whom I know well. In fact, my husband appointed two of Janet’s siblings to the federal bench. I mean, that’s an extraordinary record for one family.

But there are so many stories. If we had time, in fact, you could have an NCLR conference where all you did for a week was have people stand up and describe their own stories, couldn’t you? Where people had come from, what sacrifice has been made on your behalf.

I’m particularly proud of all the New Yorkers who are here, with whom I get to work every day as your senator. And I thank you. I thank you for your work at the Bronx Institute. I know there are some here at the Committee for Hispanic Children and Families; at the Affiliate Rural Opportunities Inc. that serves migrant farm workers statewide; Affiliate of Dominican Women’s Development Center; the Spanish Action League in Syracuse, so many others of the affiliates and individuals from New York who have done such a great job in our state but there are so many of you from literally every state, every part of our country.

As we are here today, I think it’s fair to say that you are doing your part. You are doing your part to make sure that every child and every American family has access to the tools necessary to live out their dreams and to have a piece of the American dream. But I don’t know that your government is doing its part right now. I am not sure that we are doing everything we should to make your job easier, to make sure that the opportunity society is alive and well for everyone.

And as I think about what our agenda in Washington should be, I think number one we have to provide our young people with high-quality education, training and English instruction to prepare them for adulthood. We have to protect every child’s health and we have to take action against silent epidemics like lead poisoning and asthma that can steal their future even before it begins. We have to offer healthcare to families and children, because sick kids can’t go to school and sick adults can’t go to work. And we have to ensure that everyone has a fair shake in this economy. Now, these are not just my priorities. They’re not even just your priorities. They’re not even just Hispanic or Latino priorities. These are American priorities. And it is incredibly important that we recommit ourselves to these priorities.

Let’s start with education, because it has already been mentioned today. We have known from the beginning of this country that education was the key to advancement, to mobility, to success in our society, that if we were trying to have a country based on merit, instead of where you were born, what family you were born into, whether you had land, whether you had money, if it was going to be based on merit, there was only one key to that merit and that had to be education.

But whether our children, and when I say children I mean all of our children, will be able to meet the challenges of the future is an open question because we are no longer competing Pennsylvania vs. New York, California vs. Florida, we are competing the United States vs. China, the United States vs. India, vs. Russia, Europe, vs. Latin America. We are in a global competition for the future. And the quality of education will determine, not just whether an individual can win and compete, but whether all of us, as Americans, can win and compete. I worry about this because to me, whether or not we get the educational challenge right is as important as anything else we’re doing in America right now.

Now it is not just about schools. Schools are very important, but it is also about family and community. It is about the lessons that people pass on to their own children about how important education is, how important learning is for the future. And we need to make it easier, not harder, for American families of every background, to make sure their children graduate from high school and go on and succeed in college.

You know, Janet mentioned how as First Lady, I was honored to convene the White House Conference on Hispanic Youth. And we focused on lifting the barriers to quality education for young Hispanics. We focused on the dropout rate. We focused on college retention. We focused on health, which, if you’re out of school 100 days because of your asthma, it’s hard to keep up with your classes. We focused on what we could do as the broader society to help families help their children succeed.

But you know in 2002, the dropout rate for Hispanics born outside the United State was an astounding 41 percent. And for those born inside United States, the dropout rate is consistently higher than for any other group.

And yet for three years, we have had to fight to preserve the only federal program specifically designed to reduce the dropout rate with a special focus on Hispanic youngsters. We have got to have resources available to make sure that we keep these kids in school, that we provide services for them if they’re thinking of dropping out of school, that we go around the neighborhoods and find kids who have dropped out of school, that we visit families where maybe a child has dropped out to provide some extra income or to watch younger children.

We must make it a number one priority to follow every single child, and I have introduced legislation to require states to publicly report the number of students who enter and exit in each grade, 7 through 12. Right now, we don’t know that number, so we lose thousands and thousands of our children. We need to shine a bright light. You know, we’ve even got some evidence that when test day rolls around, some schools say to some kids, “it’s okay if you don’t show up.” Or, “maybe you want to leave and not come back.” So we don’t have a child to waste and we need to be sure that our high schools particularly work for our kids.

And I want to say something that I feel very strongly about. I am very encouraging of everyone who can and wishes to go to college, but I do not believe going to college is the only way a person can have a decent, honorable, successful life in our country. If you look around, there are so many openings for skilled craftspeople, so many openings for people who have all kinds of abilities, but they’re not getting the job training. They’re not getting the apprenticeship programs. We need to do more to improve our adult education system and to make it more responsive to immigrants and to people whose first language is not English and give them the opportunity to demonstrate their skills and their abilities to succeed and make a living.

I have worked across the aisle on many occasions, and Senator John Ensign, Republican from Nevada and I, have written and passed in the Senate the Access to Employment and English Acquisition Act, and we’re going to fight to make sure it gets signed into law and it gets implemented.

Because when you look at the kind of young people who are dropping out, I know some of these kids, I visit them in places where they gather. You know, they sometimes come onto a job site and I stop and talk to them. They’re willing to work hard. But maybe, you know, they’re a little embarrassed that their English is not so good or that they have to get some financial help for their family.

And so I would call upon NCLR and all the affiliates: let’s find these young people. Let’s make sure they get the opportunities they deserve to have. And for all of the teenagers who do want to go on to college, let’s make it affordable so that they and their families can afford to go and stay in college.

You know, we have seen it become more expensive for an average income or working class income family to afford to send their child to college than it was 20 or 25 years ago. And who does that hurt the most? It hurts those who have the fewest resources.

So we need to increase the amount of money that is available for scholarships and other forms of assistance and we also need to open the doors of college to immigrant children, who came here, did well, and deserve to go on with their education.

But it is harder today for a person of limited means but high ambition and talent to find the financial resources for college than it was ten or twenty years ago. And young Hispanic men and women are suffering disproportionately from the high costs of higher education. Now, I understand yesterday that you held a rally and you featured four high-school students from Arizona and these four students designed a remote-controlled vehicle and they beat the entries from the MIT students in a national competition. Now, I want to be sure to get their names because I am gong to find somebody to make sure that these four people go to college while we’re waiting to get the doors open for everybody else.

All we hear these days is how China and India are graduating more engineers, how they’re doing better in math and science. It makes absolutely no sense to take these four bright young people and slam shut the doors to college. That is why I am a proud co-sponsor of the DREAM Act. We want to make it possible for the 65,000 undocumented young people who graduate from our high schools each year to receive in-state tuition rates, and to pursue their own dreams. And I hope with your help, we will make that DREAM Act a reality this year.

But for every poor student that we can point to with pride, there are hundreds of children whose potential is being squandered because they have health problems that we are not tending to. And I know, particularly, that lead contamination harms the development and intelligence of almost a million American children. And Hispanic children are twice as likely to be affected.

Now, lead poisoning is completely preventable, if landlords and parents know the risks and take the action necessary to remove the threat. If we do not take that action, lead poisoning undermines the intellectual ability and the learning capacity of otherwise perfectly bright, normal children. That’s why I mention it to you, because I will soon be introducing legislation to give incentives to homeowners and landlords to engage in the safe removal of lead-based hazards. I want your help on this because no child’s dream should be ended when he is a toddler because of lead paint poisoning in a situation over which he and his family have very little control, if any.

I also want your help to take on asthma. We are in the middle of an asthma epidemic. Asthma rates doubled between 1985 and 2005 – and no community is being hit harder than the Latino community. In my own state, in New York City, one in every three asthma sufferers is Hispanic, and in some communities, like East Harlem, New York, one out of every three Puerto Rican children is asthmatic. And, because of the problems in our health care system, many of these children are not getting adequate treatment.

So I am going to be introducing legislation to provide money that will go to researchers to help patients better manage their asthma and we must do a better job of understanding what causes this disease, what contributes to this disease, and I want the money to go to medically underserved communities and require researchers to researchers to collaborate with nonprofit organizations like La Raza and schools so we can help these children stay in school and learn and help them have a brighter future.

But of course, this is part of a larger problem about our health care system. You remember, I tried to do a few things about health care some years ago, and we were not successful. But the problem has not gone away. We still have a growing number of uninsured people and even for people like many of us who have insurance, the cost of the insurance keeps going up. Nearly 24 percent of Hispanic children, let’s say a quarter, of Hispanic children, and almost one third of Hispanics under 65, are uninsured.

Now these are staggering statistics. And the results are that oftentimes people don’t get the treatment they should until the very end of, you know just waiting and trying to save the money, and then they end up in an emergency room. It makes no sense. It costs money, people don’t get taken care of the way that they should, even sometimes families have to go into bankruptcy trying to pay the medical bills. There’s a tremendous amount of waste, a waste of money, a waste of the future that people should have. And I am going to be working hard to make sure we do something about health care.

But on a very specific issue, we already spend $35 billion a year to treat people who do not have health insurance. And I think we can do that more intelligently. And I’ve worked with Senator Chafee from Rhode Island to introduce the Immigrant Children’s Health Improvement Act to give health services to pregnant women immigrants and children who are currently prohibited from receiving such services for the first five years they are in this country.

It just makes common sense: if we take care of pregnant women, if we take care of infants, we solve problems. In fact, if we spend money on prenatal care, we will avoid problems later. It’s like if we spend money on early childhood education, we will prevent some of the learning problems children will face later. So let’s invest money on the front end of a child’s life and make sure we avoid the expense of the difficult health problems, which come because immigrants don’t have health insurance anymore. They don’t have even access to health care.

And the federal government, I have advocated, should be helping those hospitals, like those in New York and New Jersey, and Texas, and Arizona, and California and elsewhere that provide a lot of free health care to immigrants. We should be doing everything possible to make sure that health care is a top priority going forward for our nation.

Now finally, I hope that we can begin creating good paying jobs again in America. We have not created one net new job in America in the past four years. Now I would very much like to go back to the economic policies of my husband where we had a balanced budget, where we had a surplus, where we had people going to work. And we can also be investing in new research for new kinds of jobs that can come from broadband and wireless services and energy technology. There are so many opportunities out there.

And there isn’t any group in America that works harder than immigrants. And I know how much money immigrants send home from America to their home countries to help their families and I am a proud co-sponsor on two pieces of legislation that we need your support and voices on.

The first is the International Remittances Services Enhancement and Protection Act. That would remove the regulatory barriers that make it harder for poor people to access low cost credit services. And the second is the Money Wire Act. That will foster transparency in the money transfer industry; it will lower the cost of sending money home and it will give immigrants the information they need to have.

You know, on average, I don’t need to tell you this but on average, immigrants send home two hundred dollars a month, despite earnings that add up to less than $25,000 a year. Now, in my mind that is the very definition of family values and I’m going to do all I can to pass this legislation, both of those Acts, so that we can reward people who are working hard and playing by the rules. And I know that, later this afternoon, you’re going to present La Raza’s “Heroes in Heritage” Award to the Santiago family. You’re going to be honoring their four generations of military service to our country.

The youngest of that four-generation family isn’t here today; Sarah Santiago is on active duty in Germany. Her brother, Roberto – who happens to come from Rochester, New York – is still recovering from wounds he received in Iraq more than a year ago. Last year, Roberto talked about the closeness of his unit in wartime. He said, and I quote, “Those guys kept me alive over there. When one of us was down, the other two would get him up and keep him going.” Hispanic Americans and Hispanic immigrants have a proud tradition of serving in the American military. We have worked quickly to make sure citizenship is available to those who served, and we are working to try to make sure the families of those who served are also taken care of.

And as we celebrate the heroism of Roberto and Sarah, their father, grandfather and uncles – not to mention the mother, grandmother and aunts who raised and supported them in their service – we should remember for ourselves that our freedom is not free. It comes with sacrifice; not all of us do what the Santiago family has done and put on the uniform of our country. But Hispanic Americans have served repeatedly in a higher percentage than their population represents.

But all of us do something: we build a business that employs people, we teach in a school or we mentor a child. We provide health care in a hospital or in a doctor’s office or in an emergency room. We police the streets or answer the call of the firehouse. We try to make sure that our contribution and our family and our community adds up to the pursuit of what we believe the American dream is all about, for ourselves and for the next generation.

Now, Cesar Chavez said so many things that we should be reminded of, and one of them is this: “We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community. Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own.”

NCLR has remembered that for forty years. You have stood for that. You have been a strong voice insisting that the American dream knows no boundaries of language, color or national origin. And by doing that you have helped to make the American dream stronger for me, for my daughter, for everyone who cares about the kind of future that we know we will live together.

As I look at our country today, I hope that this example will be felt and followed far beyond not just the confines of this room or not even just the organizational reach of NCLR. But that young people particularly will understand the sacrifices long before; that they will put in the effort to do the best they can in school. That they will put in the effort to make a positive contribution to their community, that they will understand what those of us who have come before have maybe taken for granted – that we can be individually successful but as Americans, as inheritors of this proud dream that was birthed here in this city so long ago, we should never settle just for personal success. We should understand we are all enhanced when everyone does better when everyone is given the opportunity to live up to his or her God-given potential. You have made America stronger for all of us, and together I believe we can build an America that is stronger for those who come after us. That is worthy of our highest ideals and keeps faith with the next generation of Americans who come here, who are here, who believe with all their hearts that America’s best days are still ahead.

Thank you all so very much, God bless you!

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