♪ Callista L. Gingrich: Immigrants have come to America from around the world for many reasons, some fled famine and poverty, others sought religious freedom, and some came for the possibility of a better life.

♪ Spartz: My name is Victoria Spartz.

I was born in Ukraine.

My name is Zalmay Khalilzad.

I was born in Afghanistan.

Moving!

Daume, voice-over: My name is Maria Daume.

I was born in a prison in Russia.

Kissinger: My name is Henry Kissinger, and I came to America in September of 1938.

Man, voice-over: Looking now in the rear-view mirror at thousands upon thousands of years of human history, the one thing that breaks the gloom is the story of America.

♪ ♪ Callista: In 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, a document that would define the founding principles of a new nation.

♪ Jefferson wrote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

♪ Newt Gingrich: Jefferson's words and the promises of liberty and opportunity brought immigrants from around the world to America's shores.

Man: This is exactly what Lincoln thought the Declaration of Independence in particular would be.

It would be a magnet to people everywhere who came to share those same principles of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.

♪ Newt: In 1831, French diplomat and political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville toured America.

He later published his observations and noted that the strength of America lies not in its government, but in its people.

♪ Well, the question of what Tocqueville observed about the American person is that they had internalized a spirit of independence and a relative degree of openness.

I think one of the most amazing things that Alexis de Tocqueville notices about the United States in the 1830s, 1840s, is that the dominant immigrant population at the time were Irish Roman Catholics, and they were a minority in a majority Protestant country at the time, but he was very impressed with how their religious life was flourishing in the religious freedom that was available to them in America.

Allen: An independence of mind, a tendency towards association, voluntary participation, spontaneity-- all of these things had come to characterize the Americans by the time Tocqueville was observing them.

Callista: Tocqueville, whose parents were jailed during the French revolution, believed America best embodied the new political and social ideas of freedom and equality.

♪ Hanssen: I think sometimes that immigrants can actually see the distinctive character of American culture better than people who have been born and raised here.

♪ Guelzo: These are people who have been schooled from their earliest elementary textbooks in the words, the phraseology, and the ideas of these founding documents, and for that reason, they're more than just a historical footnote to the development of the American Republic.

They inhabit the very soul of what is to be an American.

♪ Callista: The term "American Dream" was the creation of James Truslow Adams in 1931.

In his best-selling book, Epic of America, Adams wrote that regardless of one's social class, life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.

♪ These stories remind us that the American Dream is alive and thriving.

The promises of freedom and opportunity remain as powerful incentives for those who make their journey to America.

♪ [Train clattering] [Train whistle blowing] ♪ [Gulls squawking] ♪ [People shouting] [Ship's horn sounds] ♪ [Ship horn blaring] ♪ ♪ Kennedy: It is a proud privilege to be a citizen of the great republic, to realize that we are the descendants of 40 million people who left other countries, other familiar scenes, to come here to the United States to build a new life, to make a new opportunity for themselves and their children.

♪ Callista: As American citizens, we are united not because of where we came from, but because of the shared belief that our unalienable rights come from God and are guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

For many immigrants, their naturalization ceremony is the emotional culmination of their journey.

It is my honor to be the first person to address you all as my fellow Americans.

[Cheering and applause] ♪ Hanssen: I think it's very important that we make sure that the immigrants who are coming here are coming here through a legal process so that they are protected by the rule of law, and we have laws that protect labor, we have laws that protect housing issues, and if people are here illegally, they don't have the benefit of the protection of rule of law, and so we need to maintain that.

Callista: Immigrants often retain a sense of pride in their heritage, which adds to America's rich melting pot of ideas, cultures, and traditions.

Their contributions to the United States are part of the fabric of our nation, from well-known entrepreneurs to everyday Americans.

Throughout American history, immigrants have made countless contributions that have profoundly shaped our society.

As the land of the free and home of the brave, America is a nation that honors the past and looks toward a future of limitless opportunities.

♪ ♪ Kissinger: My name is Henry Kissinger... and I came to America... in September 1938.

♪ Newt: Dr. Henry Kissinger, who passed away in 2023, was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in 1923 in Fürth, Germany, and by any standard, lived a remarkable life.

He fled Nazi Germany with his family in 1938 to become one of the most influential American political figures of our time.

Kissinger: When I came to America at the age of 15, I did not have any specific ambitions because the change in my life was dramatic.

♪ It's important to keep in mind that I came from Germany, where I was a member of a minority, the Jewish minority, that was being actively persecuted.

♪ I think native-born Americans take the basic principles for granted, even if they value them, and the circumstances that I had known were a dictatorship that was persecuting people of my ethnic background.

♪ There was not much attachment to where I had lived previously, so the process of assimilation went very well and very easily.

♪ Callista: The Kissinger family-- father Louis, mother Paula, and younger brother Walter, settled in the German-Jewish neighborhood of Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan.

Henry attended high school at night and worked a factory job during the day.

I started working at the minimum age permitted for work because of the financial condition of our family.

♪ That particular style of life was not typical of middle-class Americans, but it was fulfilling because it gave me an opportunity to meet a range of Americans that I would not have met otherwise.

♪ Callista: 1943 was a pivotal year for 20-year-old Henry.

He was studying at City College in New York when he was drafted into the army and then naturalized as a United States citizen.

Kissinger: It was, of course, a culmination for all of us who generally had emigrated because of systematic persecution to come to a country and be fully accepted as a citizen, and it was a very moving and fulfilling event.

♪ Newt: With America at war in Europe and the Pacific, Henry was assigned to the 83rd Infantry Division along with Midwesterners from Illinois and Wisconsin.

Kissinger: The reception of me by these people from the Middle West had an openness and a friendliness and a warmth which has been with me all my life, so friendly, in fact, that they never asked me about my accent, and I thought I had lost it.

♪ [Gunfire and explosions] ♪ Newt: Because he was fluent in German, Henry was sent to Europe, where he fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and volunteered for hazardous intelligence missions.

I would be able to read German documents and interrogate German prisoners.

♪ Callista: Kissinger was awarded a Bronze Star for tracking down Gestapo officers, but with the local population, he took care to avoid any abuses during his command.

♪ After the war, which Kissinger said made him feel like a true American, he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and then earned a Masters and PhD from Harvard University in the early 1950s.

♪ Dr. Kissinger joined the Harvard faculty in 1954 as a member of the Department of Government and Center for International Affairs, gaining a reputation as an authority on U.S. strategic policy.

♪ Kissinger: I did not have a specific goal in mind, and I would say the last thing I thought is that someday I would wind up in Washington in the White House and as Secretary of State.

Newt: Dr. Kissinger served as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

He achieved major diplomatic successes with China, the Soviet Union, and the Middle East.

In China, he helped formalize groundbreaking U.S.-China relations at the height of the Cold War.

♪ Kissinger: My dream had always been service in the achievement of peace and international order, perhaps because I had seen so much disorder in my youth that this became an objective that has greatly influenced my life.

♪ As I tell my young friends, I didn't aim for it.

and if you aim for a specific job, you become too tense and too much concerned with yourself.

♪ My best advice has always been to do the best you can in any circumstances in which you find yourself.

♪ Callista: Along with the Bronze Star, Dr. Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for negotiating a ceasefire with Vietnam and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977, the nation's highest civilian award.

♪ Newt: Reflecting on his extraordinary success, Dr. Kissinger believed, "No foreign policy, "no matter how ingenious, has any chance of success "if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none."

♪ Kissinger: The most important quality of America at the beginning was the idea of freedom and human dignity, which I experienced for the first time when I came to the United States, and that, to me, made all the difference in terms of quality of my life.

♪ ♪ Callista: Historically, U.S. immigration has been driven by both push and pull factors.

The pull came from the allure of a vast land of opportunity, while the push was frequently the result of authoritarian governments.

Fleet: My name is Xi Van Fleet.

I came to America 36 years ago.

Why?

Because I know America is a place where one's dream can come true.

♪ I was born and grew up in the city of Chengdu in Sichuan province.

I was turning seven when Cultural Revolution started.

Callista: From 1966 to 1976, Chairman Mao Zedong launched a violent cultural revolution against his own people to erase any remnants of capitalism or traditional Chinese culture.

He used China's youth, called the Red Guards, to tear down symbols of the past and publicly shame any who resisted.

[Speaking Chinese] ♪ Van Fleet: And I can remember everything.

People say, "How can you remember?

You were a little girl, like six or seven."

You remember when your world turned upside down.

[Crowd shouting] [Mao speaking Chinese] Van Fleet, voice-over: All we did was going out and every day someone will be on public trial in parade, and so that was my early memory of the Cultural Revolution, total chaos.

[People singing in Chinese] Van Fleet, voice-over: When we were very, very little, we have to learn all the songs.

There were many.

One of them is just even today the children in China still sing.

It is, one of the line is, "Father's dear, Mother's dear, but no one is as dear as Chairman Mao"... [Mao speaking Chinese] Van Fleet, voice-over: and there are other songs telling us our real parents are the party and Chairman Mao.

♪ When I graduated at the age of 16, there's no other choice for me.

You don't have choice.

Everything is controlled, so the only option for me after high school was go to the countryside to be re-educated by the peasants, so I went to the countryside and work in the fields under primitive condition for three years until Mao died.

♪ Callista: When Mao Zedong died, China's new leader, Deng Xiao Ping, opened up the country and began to reverse Mao's devastating policies.

♪ Van Fleet, voice-over: What's the result of the Chinese Cultural Revolution?

After 10 years of this disastrous revolution, Chinese people were deeply divided, at each other's throat.

The economy was in total ruin and 3,000 years of Chinese civilization destroyed.

[Demonstrators chanting] Newt: After teaching English in China, Xi had the opportunity to come to America.

She obtained a visa with the help of a visiting American teacher.

Xi attended college in the United States and worked various jobs, including housekeeping and babysitting.

Her determination paid off when she eventually earned a master's degree.

Van Fleet, voice-over: Coming to America, I understand this is the place that everyone can succeed if you put your mind to it, but I have to say, it's not easy, but because my hard work, I was able to start working as a professional in the field of information management.

♪ Callista: Reflecting on her long journey from Chengdu, Xi recalls a class photo as a schoolgirl in her teens.

♪ Van Fleet: It is interesting.

I never really think much about this photo, but now I'm looking at it, it is really something that I was smiling, and there are just not many kids were smiling because life was difficult.

I was thinking maybe...

I was given this message, I will be OK, and one day, I will be out of here, and that's true.

I am one of the two that ever managed to go to college, and I now am the only one who made my way to America.

♪ Newt: In 2021, Xi--a Loudon County, Virginia, mother-- stood up at a school board meeting and voiced her concerns about critical race theory being taught in schools.

♪ Van Fleet: Growing up in Mao's China, all this seem very familiar.

The communist regime used the same critical theories to divide people.

The only difference is, they used class instead of race.

The critical race theory has its roots in cultural Marxism.

It should have no place in our schools.

[Cheering and applause] ♪ Callista: Xi's decision to speak at the school board meeting was prompted by the unrest in the United States in the summer of 2020.

Van Fleet: That was something that I never dreamed I would do.

As a typical immigrant from China, I was always quiet, and I was shy.

I would not go and speak in the public, but why I went there is because when I see in 2020 what happened here is what I saw as a little girl in China during the Cultural Revolution.

[Chanting in Chinese] Van Fleet, voice-over: I saw the Red Guards riot, burning our city, tearing down the statue, and so I said, "I have to do something.

I cannot remain silent anymore," and that's how I got involved, and I went there and told them what's going on here is the American version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

♪ To me, there's no greater honor to be American citizen, and I become a solid middle class.

I enjoying everything that my dream afforded me, and one of them is to travel around the world with American passport.

♪ No country is perfect-- that includes America-- but this is clear to me, that our founding father did gave us a perfect blueprint, and that is perfect.

We just have to work hard to make this a more perfect union.

♪ This is my experience.

American Dream is what you make it to be, and you are the one.

You design it, and you achieve it, and I am able to achieve my American Dream, and I love it.

♪ ♪ Newt: The appeal of freedom and opportunity has inspired millions to make their journey to America, but for one young man from Iran, it was his passion for space that drove him to seek a new life in the United States.

♪ Ghaffarian: My name is Kam Ghaffarian.

I came to United States in January of 1977.

♪ Callista: Kam Ghaffarian was born in 1958 in Isfahan, Iran, the one-time capital of ancient Persia.

Before becoming a visionary entrepreneur-- starting companies involved with nuclear energy, spacecraft, and space stations-- Kam remembers a profound experience as a young boy that changed the course of his life.

Ghaffarian: We used to sleep in our yard and look at the stars, and from early childhood, I became a stargazer and just was so curious about you know, how big is the universe and how far are the stars, and is there a way we can go to them.

Man: Ignition sequence starts.

Six, five, four, three, two, one, zero.

All engines running.

We have a liftoff, liftoff on Apollo 11.

Ghaffarian: One of the major transformational moments in my life is when I was 11 years old, I saw Neil Armstrong landing on the surface of the moon.

Armstrong: Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

[Beep] I consider myself a space cadet.

I just had an incredible desire to become part of the space program.

I really, really, truly wanted to come to the United States, and that's the reason that I migrate to United States.

♪ Newt: Although the Iranian revolution was a year away, there were increasing political tremors that led to anti-government demonstrations across the country.

In 1977, Kam, just shy of his 18th birthday, was able to get a student visa to the United States.

Ghaffarian: I had very little money, so I was able to entice one of my uncles to let me borrow $2,000, and that's the amount of money I had when I landed in New York.

♪ One of the early challenges was I thought that I spoke English till I arrived in the United States, and I felt like people spoke a lot faster, so it's just like want to tell everyone, "Just slow down so I can understand," but at the same time, to me, it was incredibly thrilling, and exciting to be in this new environment, and learning new ways.

♪ Newt: Kam earned degrees in computer science, electronic engineering, and information management while working for industry leaders, including NASA and Ford Aerospace.

Ghaffarian: I always had this desire to start my own company, and when I say desire, really a burning desire, and so I was able to, like, put all on the line, get a mortgage on the house, put together about $250,000.

Callista: Kam reached out to Harold Stinger, an engineer who hired him at NASA Godard Space Flight Center.

Together, they created SGT, or Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies, an aerospace services company.

♪ Ghaffarian's company became NASA's second largest engineering services contractor, generating revenue of over a half billion dollars per year.

Ghaffarian: I just believe in limitless thinking, and I think with thinking boldly and thinking limitlessly, you sort of go toward those goals.

Then you can accomplish incredible things, and the vision actually for the things I'm doing is to advance the state of humanity, and human knowledge, to do things that is for betterment of humanity.

♪ Ghaffarian: In one of my companies, we are building the first private commercial space station that will replace the current International Space Station.

Newt: Kam Ghaffarian co-founded Axiom Space to build an orbiting laboratory approximately 250 miles above the surface of the Earth in what is called low Earth orbit.

Here, a four-person, multinational crew will conduct research and extensive experiments in groundbreaking technologies.

♪ Ghaffarian: We're creating this platform space where you can do advanced manufacturing, you can bio-print corneas and retinas, and you can do all kinds of pharmaceutical research, and we're creating this multi-trillion-dollar marketplace, and we're sort of really at the beginning of making that happen.

♪ I'm one of those kind of people that believe that the ultimate destiny for humanity, for humankind is literally to go to other stars.

♪ Now we know with a Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope that there are trillion other galaxies, not billion, but trillion other galaxies.

♪ That's why I have actually created a non-profit organization called Limitless Space Institute to study how you can do interstellar travel.

These are sort of the really early steps, the beginnings of humanity finally being able to go outside of our solar system and go to other stars.

♪ Newt: Kam became a United States citizen in 1989.

As for many, his naturalization ceremony was a deeply moving experience.

I'm just so incredibly proud that I became U.S. citizen.

I am proud to say that I had lots of tears in my eyes, but it was tears of joy and being able to call myself an American and pursue my dreams and my desires.

♪ Callista: Through pioneering entrepreneurship and philanthropic activities, Kam Ghaffarian continues to pursue his American Dream.

♪ Man: Dragon SpaceX comm check.

Woman: We have you loud and clear.

Ghaffarian: And I made this decision that I want my journey to be more about making a difference than making more money, nothing against making money.

In fact, I believe that but use that as a way of making a difference.

Man: Copy 200, and brace for splashdown.

[Beep] I believe America is one of the greatest countries in the world where you can come here, and if you work hard and you apply yourself, you can achieve anything you want, and you can have any success you desire, and you become anybody you want, and to me that's really the definition of American Dream.

♪ [Cheering and applause] Man: Ax-2 is back on Earth.

[Applause] ♪ Newt: Political unrest in Europe in the 1930s brought not only future political figures, but also artists to the United States.

America offered the possibility of a new future.

♪ She was one of the greatest stars during Hollywood's Golden Age.

But Hedy Lamarr was much more than Hollywood royalty who worked with legends, including Clark Gable, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, and James Stewart.

♪ Callista: She was also an ingenious inventor who co-created a secret communications system during World War II, pioneering a technique that led to breakthroughs in modern Wi-Fi technology.

♪ Hedy Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914, in Vienna, Austria, the only child of Emil and Gertrud Kiesler.

At the age of five, Hedy first showed an interest in technology when she dismantled and reassembled a music box.

Man, voice-over: She sort of undid it, put it back together, and, you know, much later in her life, she would be inventing things that actually put things together for the better of mankind.

♪ Callista: In her teens, Hedy began to model, and played small roles in movies.

Hammond: Her beauty was her calling card.

People were really astounded.

Even at a younger age there as a teenager, she had a unique look.

Newt: At 18, Hedy married a relentless suitor, a 33-year-old arms manufacturer named Friedrich Mandl.

He was one the wealthiest men in Austria.

He also controlled Hedy's career, and eventually her freedom of movement, and Lamarr, of Jewish decent, disapproved of her husband's increasing ties with Germany and the rising Nazi Party.

Hammond: The marriage didn't work out for her.

This was the first of many, many marriages, but she wanted to get out.

She wanted to get out of there altogether and move on with her life.

♪ It was a very risky move at that time for Hedy to leave this man, you know, who was traveling in those very, very high-profile circles there, too, and to get out of there, and she was very concerned about her mother, as well.

She was a very smart person.

Even at a young age, she could see the way things were going, and her whole goal was to get out of there and move on, and she did.

Callista: In London, Hedy met Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM Studios.

Mayer offered her a contract for $125 a week.

Hedy turned him down but soon regretted it.

Hammond: Louis B. Mayer, the celebrated head of MGM, knew that a big ticket for filmgoers were these European beauties, and he was in Europe looking for more, more along the lines of Louise Reiner, who won back-to-back Academy Awards, and many of these emigres and Marlene Dietrich and Garbo, and all of these people that came to MGM and Hollywood, too, and he was looking for more.

♪ Callista: Hedy booked a ticket to the United States on the same cruise ship as Mayer--The Normandie.

Hammond: And so, she would make sure she was seen walking across that ship and seeing all these young men and other people on that ship turning around-- "Who's that?

Who is that?"

-- and knowing that Louis B. Mayer would be noticing this, too.

She made sure she was in the right places for that, very, very clever, and it worked.

He came back, offered her $500 a week to come in there and sign with MGM.

♪ Newt: In 1938, Louis B. Mayer promoted Hedy as the "World's Most Beautiful Woman."

Her first American film-- "Algiers," with Charles Boyer-- made her a star.

Do you know Paris?

Do I know Paris?

La rive Saint-Martin.

Champs-Élysées.

La Gare du Nord.

The Opéra, Boulevard des Capucines.

Abbesses, La Chapelle.

Rue Montmartre.

Boulevard de Rochechouart.

Rue Fontaine.

Both: La Place Blanche.

[Laughter] ♪ Hammond, voice-over: She certainly knew the camera, I think instantly knew the camera and what the camera was getting.

The camera does not lie, and the camera knew that Lamarr was a star if she was in the right vehicle, and she realized that and went to Mayer and really begged him to put her in some of these big, A-list movies that that studio could turn out, not some of the lesser titles.

♪ Newt: While making dozens of Hollywood films, Hedy spent her spare time at home inventing.

She was encouraged by Howard Hughes, whom she was dating, but their relationship soon became centered not on romance, but on science and invention.

Hughes gave Lamarr complete access to his scientists to help with her inventions.

♪ At the time, Hughes was trying to build the world's fastest aircraft.

Hammond: She's really remarkable in that way and found that relationship with Howard Hughes was one of using their intelligence, and I think she liked him for that.

It was different.

♪ Callista: At the beginning of World War II, many countries faced torpedo attacks by Nazi U-boats.

In 1942 Hedy tried to get her mother out of their native Austria, then under Nazi rule.

Hammond: She was worried about her family back home.

She really felt, "I've got to do something "to help in the war effort "where we can prevent this and help save lives."

Callista: Lamarr learned that torpedoes could be radio-controlled.

♪ With her friend, avant-garde composer George Antheil, she developed a system that could block the enemies' detection of radio-guided weapons.

[Explosion] Newt: Their technique to minimize radio interference was known as frequency hopping and had been tried before by Marconi and Tesla.

♪ Hammond: Maybe because she was an MGM star, they didn't take it seriously enough, the Navy and all of that, to use at the time.

She wanted to be known as an inventor here with her patent and get accepted as an inventor, and that didn't quite happen.

They said, "No, no, no.

You're a star.

"You'd be much better helping us in the war effort by selling bonds."

♪ Narrator: Irene Dunne, Ronald Coleman, Hedy Lamarr, Greer Garson, all part of a contingent of some 50 screen celebrities giving their time and talents to aid the national war effort.

Hammond: That is what stars were supposed to do.

They weren't supposed to create these devices that are going to stop torpedoes.

I mean, this was a different kind of star, Hedy Lamarr.

♪ Newt: Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil's theories were eventually incorporated into Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS technology, but by that time Lamarr and Antheil's patent had long expired.

Hammond: She never got the money.

It's a huge deal that she never got a dime for.

♪ Callista: Hedy left MGM Studios in 1945.

She formed a production company with mixed success.

Hammond: So the career is on a slide.

She loses money on her productions that she did, but lo and behold, Cecil B. DeMille comes to the rescue with "Sampson and Delilah," which was a huge hit and became the biggest motion picture hit of Hedy Lamarr's career.

♪ Callista: Hedy Lamarr became a U.S. citizen in 1953 at the age of 38.

Her film career slowed.

However, her personal life was never dull, having married six times.

Newt: Hedy revealed some personal insights about her incredible life in a recently discovered interview with Fleming Meeks, a "Forbes Magazine" journalist.

♪ Can you hear it?

That's my heart beating.

♪ Callista: Hedy Lamarr passed away in 2000 at the age of 85.

She had long been recognized as one of Hollywood's greatest stars.

In 2014, Lamarr and Antheil were posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, for their frequency hopping innovation, which became known as spread spectrum and is found in every cell phone.

Hammond: It's the essence, it's the blueprint for what we now have as cell phones.

It's used in Wi-Fi, it's used in Bluetooth, and I think that shocked people because they didn't know any of this about this star.

Maybe that's her legacy.

Maybe being smarter than the average Hollywood star, her legacy really is her intelligence and her gift to mankind.

♪ Newt: Immigrants to the United States are often drawn to serve in the U.S. military as a way to demonstrate their patriotism.

That was the case for an immigrant from Russia named Maria Daume.

♪ Daume, voice-over: My name is Maria Daume.

I was born in a prison in Russia.

I came to America when I was four years old, and I became the first United States Marine Corps infantry contracted female.

♪ Newt: Maria Daume and her twin brother's incredible journey to America began in a Siberian prison.

I do not know why my birth mother was in prison, and I also don't know who my birth father is.

When we were two years old, my mum passed away in prison, and from two to three years old, we were kind of bounced around.

There's no actual paper trail of where we really were.

We were in the orphanage until we were four, until we were adopted by a couple in Long Island... ♪ so when me and my brother were adopted and we came to America, we were very protective over each other, but we were also extremely anxious, and we knew that at the end of the day, we got each other's back.

We didn't know anything.

There was a language barrier.

They didn't speak Russian.

We didn't speak English.

They had a dog.

We didn't even know what a dog was.

We were very overwhelmed and very nervous.

♪ Callista: At school, Maria and her brother faced other challenges.

Daume: We got bullied a lot.

There were a lot of mean kids growing up.

Going into school, they bullied us for being adopted, not being related to our parents, being from Russia.

Anything kids could say, they said it to us, and eventually, people stopped, but for a while it was rough.

♪ When I was 14 years old, I was sent to Sunshine Prevention Center for anger management, where I met this amazing woman named Nancy.

I finished my anger management course.

I started working at Sunshine when I was 14, as well, and throughout the years, me and Nancy grew close.

She is my mom.

She unofficially adopted me.

She is the nana to my daughter, and she's about the best person in my whole entire life, and there's not one person that I look up more to than my mom Nancy.

♪ I did not show any interest in joining the military until I was about 12 years old.

I went to a Relay for Life, which is a cancer fundraiser at my high school, and the Marines were there, and they were doing pull-up contests, and I went up and I banged out 10 pull-ups, and the recruiter was, like, amazed.

I needed to go and do something worthy and honorable, and what's more honorable than serving your country?

I walked into the recruiting station, and I saw my recruiter, and I told him, "My name's Maria.

"I wanna be a United States Marine, but I also wanna be on the front lines," and he laughed at me, and he said, "Well, that can't happen because women can't be on the front lines."

Newt: Two weeks later, Maria received a surprise phone call from a Marine recruiter asking her to take a combat fitness test.

♪ Daume: And I was gonna be doing it with a bunch of other men, and I needed to completely outshine every one of those men, if I wanted to have a shot to become a infantry Marine, and I went, and I completely destroyed it.

I killed it.

I did all the pull-ups, my run time was amazing, and I did so well that they called, "Hire," and they decided to give me a United States Marine Corps contract for infantry, which was the first contract they've ever done like that.

♪ In the basic training, there was what they call the Crucible.

Sweep!

♪ Daume, voice-over: The Crucible is the most remarkable event in basic training because that is the last four days of all your training, all the skills that you've learned, all the knowledge, all the physical training, all the mental training... Moving!

♪ Daume, voice-over: and they put everything together in a four-day course that you have to complete, so there's, like, no sleeping, You're not eating a lot, and you're just moving, moving, moving.

Move out!

♪ Daume, voice-over: Finishing the 20k by far was one of the most remarkable achievements I've had in the United States Marine Corps just simply for the reasons of I was told that I wasn't gonna be able to do it, and to see myself cross that finish line and see so many men that were bigger and stronger than me fall out really proved the fact that women can do anything that they set their minds to.

♪ They trained me hard, and they understood that I wanted to do something different, and I think that at the end of the day, they all really respected it.

She was right at the top of the pack.

[Shouting] [Whistle blows] [Shouting] [Whistle blows repeatedly] Get up.

Daume, voice-over: My instructor at Parris Island Infantry Training Battalion in North Carolina told me that I didn't just pass the training.

I excelled at the training, and that made me feel extremely proud because he was a old-time infantry Marine.

[Blows whistle] Get her, Daume!

[Whistle blows repeatedly] ♪ Daume, voice-over: On the day of my graduation, I felt relieved, but I also felt an enormous amount of pride.

I finally earned the title and that was by far one of the most proudest days of my whole entire life.

According to regulations.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice.

So help me God.

Oorah!

♪ Daume, voice-over: I think my initial reason for going into the United States Marine Corps was to excel at something great, but looking into the military was my sense of patriotism.

I felt like that was the route that I went for because of how honorable it is to serve your country, and I think that's why it helped me excel in what I wanted to do.

♪ Callista: Maria served four years in the Marines and earned multiple decorations.

She graduated cum laude from Long Island University with a degree in social work and hopes her story might inspire others, like it did for a young schoolgirl doing a class project.

"When I joined the Marine Corps, I completed the Crucible, "and graduated boot camp, and that is how I actually became a Marine."

Daume: And she went into her school dressed as me.

She got a little set of cammies, a little set of face paint, and she said that her hero was Maria Daume, and that was extremely inspiring, and I definitely feel extremely proud to be able to say that.

♪ Newt: Each year, over one million people from around the world immigrate legally to the United States, but in the 19th century, the journey to America was far more difficult.

♪ Callista: She was the first American saint, born Maria Francesca Cabrini on July 15, 1850, about 20 miles south of Milan, Italy.

The youngest of 13 children, she and only three of her siblings survived beyond adolescence.

Woman: Her family was very religious, so she, from a very early age, had a very strong faith.

She felt she was called to be a missionary.

In fact, she wanted to go to China... [Choir singing in Latin] ♪ so when she was little, one of her hobbies or pastimes was to go to a stream behind her uncle's house, and she'd make little boats made of paper and put violets in them and send them off down the river as her missionaries who were going off to the Far East.

♪ One of the things that happened then when she was seven was that she fell in one day, and this was significant for two reasons-- first, because it gave her a lifelong fear of water... ♪ and second was that it exacerbated a number of health conditions that she had.

She was born two months prematurely, which, in 1850, was pretty much a death sentence, and she was very fragile throughout her whole life.

♪ After this accident, she ended up with an extended period, several years, of severe bronchitis.

♪ Newt: Because of her poor health, Maria Francesca was turned down by three different missionary orders when she asked to join them.

Attaway: So here is someone who felt she was called to do something, couldn't do it, so she had a lot of disappointment and frustration in there and eventually was able to join a small religious order.

♪ Callista: In November of 1880, when Maria Francesca turned 30, she and seven other women founded The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

They took in orphans, opened a school and nursery, and were so successful in serving the needy, that Maria Francesca eventually met with Pope Leo XIII.

Attaway: She went to Pope Leo XIII and asked him his opinion and his advice, and he said famously, "Don't go to the East, but go to the West," and the reason that she was asked to go was because of what was called the Italian problem, and the Italian problem had to do with the hundreds of thousands of Italian immigrants who had come into the United States and other countries and were living in dire poverty, especially in New York on the Lower East Side, and she was asked to go and help them.

♪ Newt: Mother Cabrini left for the United States in March of 1889 along with six other sisters.

Nothing could prepare them for the difficulties ahead.

♪ Attaway: When she got here, she went directly to the Lower East Side, which was where the Italians were living, and settled in quite promptly.

She was unafraid.

There are news reports from the time that she and her six sisters who came with her, would walk into streets where the police were afraid to go.

♪ The Lower East Side at the time, the Five Points area, had huge crime problems.

It had huge health problems.

It had dire poverty, and this was where she chose to go.

♪ When the Italians came, they were at the very bottom of the immigrant pecking order.

They had the worst paid jobs.

They had the worst housing.

They were living in conditions that today we see in third-world countries.

This was New York.

This was the land of opportunity, but it was a very hard land for people who were coming in at the bottom.

♪ Callista: Within a week, Mother Cabrini set up catechism classes for more than 300 children.

Within a month, she opened an orphanage.

♪ Attaway: Her focus when she came here was to help the Italians, to help the Italians who were in poverty, to help the Italians who were struggling, and that included both their physical needs and their spiritual needs.

♪ Mother Cabrini had a very interesting personality.

She was incredibly kind.

She was quiet.

She believed in not reacting, but in responding to the needs of others.

She was also incredibly strong.

She was strong in that way that someone can be when they know who they are, and they know what they're doing, so she's a very efficient woman.

She was very resourceful, and she was very caring.

♪ Callista: Mother Cabrini founded 67 schools, hospitals, and orphanages around the world.

She established missions in the United States, Central America, South America, and Europe.

Attaway: So she was a woman who was constantly on the move.

♪ She'd cross the ocean more than 23 times.

and, remember, this is someone who was afraid of water, so she would go anywhere.

She would move through her fears in order to get to where she believed she was called to be.

♪ Mother Cabrini was not a prototypical immigrant in the sense of what her aspirations were.

It wasn't ever about her.

Nothing she did was ever about her.

Everything she did was always about someone else and about the good of other people and about bringing kindness into the world, about making things better, and in that way, I do think she's very American, that she can embody other aspects of what we, as Americans, think of because we do want to help others.

We do want to be kind.

Newt: Mother Cabrini became an American citizen in 1909 at the age of 59.

Travel and health issues were a constant challenge.

Attaway: So much of the time, despite all of these things that we see her starting-- despite the hospitals, despite the schools, despite orphanages-- there are many, many times that she was laid flat for a couple of weeks or even a month, so she had a history of chronic heart problems, and that's eventually what she died of.

[Choir singing in Latin] ♪ Newt: In 1917 in Chicago, Mother Cabrini died of complications from heart disease and malaria at the age of 67.

Her funeral was held in her beloved New York City.

♪ Attaway: There was a huge outpouring of support, just enormous.

The most apt parallel is when Mother Teresa of Calcutta died and everyone immediately knew that there had been a huge loss.

♪ Callista: Mother Cabrini was beatified in 1938 and canonized eight years later in 1946.

♪ Attaway: The turnout was phenomenal.

It was also the first canonization after World War II, so St. Peter's was crowded with 50,000 onlookers.

Here in New York, which is where her remains were, in the high school chapel at the time, they held a mass simultaneously with Cardinal Spellman, and on that day, 45,000 people came through the high school in order to honor her and to venerate her relics.

Narrator: It is in this high school, one of the many monuments raised to her memory, that she lies entombed beneath the altar.

[Choir singing in Latin] Callista: Today, the remains of Saint Cabrini rest for veneration on the land she purchased in 1899.

Completed in 1959, it's now the shrine of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, honoring the first United States citizen to become a saint.

The shrine overlooks the Hudson in northern Manhattan.

♪ Attaway, voice-over: I work here because she's one of my heroes.

She's taught me so many things in terms of her example, in terms of her faith, in terms of what it actually means to not be afraid, in terms of what it means to help others.

♪ The Bible says, "Be not afraid," so many different times, but how we do that is by seeing how other people have done that.

♪ She's a great woman.

She's a just really phenomenal woman.

♪ Callista: Historically, we've seen immigrant success stories in every imaginable vocation and profession, including the sciences.

♪ Newt: Albert Einstein, whose Theory of Relativity revolutionized modern physics, is widely considered one of history's most influential physicists.

His towering intellect and exceptional creativity made the name "Einstein" synonymous with "genius."

♪ Einstein is up there with Aristotle and Newton as the three greatest physicists of all time because he came up with the two pillars of what became 20th-century science-- relativity theory and quantum theory, and his fingerprints are on every technology that comes out of this physics revolution, from the atom bomb to the microchip to lasers and space travel.

♪ Callista: Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, on March 14, 1879, and spent most of his childhood in Munich.

Isaacson: Einstein was slow in learning to speak as a child.

They called him "der depperte," the dopey one, and they even consulted a doctor thinking he might be learning-disabled, but basically, it was that he was a visual thinker.

He was not very good at verbal thinking, but he said in some ways that helped him because he marveled at things that other people didn't even notice, and he was able to visualize things very well.

Callista: Einstein would later write what he called the two wonders that deeply affected his life.

When Einstein was a kid, his father gave him a compass, and he sat there marveling at how the needle, nothing was touching that needle, but it twitched and always pointed north, but throughout his life until his deathbed, Einstein's still trying to figure out how can a force field interact with a physical object?

♪ Callista: Einstein's second wonder was a book of geometry.

Woman: He devoured it.

He loved geometry, and he just read it cover to cover, and so that really fascinated his tutor actually at that time.

He loved math, he loved physics, but he wasn't so good at languages or natural sciences, like chemistry, for example.

♪ Newt: At 17, Einstein enrolled in a four-year mathematics and physics teaching program at a federal polytechnic school in Zurich.

There, he met his future wife, a 20-year-old from Serbia named Mileva Maric.

Maric was the only woman in the program, and she shared a passion for mathematics and physics with Einstein.

The two of them fell in love, and, of course, the two of them were in love with physics, and so he was having a really great time.

It was such contrast from the very dogmatic and very rigid German education, and now he was in a place where he could really freely dream.

Newt: After graduating at the turn of the century, Einstein failed to secure a single teaching job.

A former teacher refused Einstein's request for a recommendation, believing his demeanor was disrespectful.

♪ Isaacson: In the end, when he's sending out all these postcard applications to try to get teaching jobs, even in high schools, sometimes he doesn't even get an answer, but he keeps getting rejected, so he gets a job as a third-class examiner in the Swiss Patent Office.

♪ Callista: 1905 was called Einstein's Miracle Year.

He earned a PhD from the University of Zurich, and published four landmark papers that changed the accepted perceptions of time, space, and matter.

♪ Isaacson: One of them comes up with the Theory of Special Relativity, which is basically that the speed of light is always constant, but time is relative, depending on your state of motion.

He also comes up with the concept of quantum mechanics, that light can be both wave and particle, and finally, as an addendum much later that year, he says, "Well, energy has a relationship to mass that's related to the speed of light," and he comes up with the most famous equation in all of physics-- E=mc^2.

After Einstein comes up with the Theory of Special Relativity, people don't quite get it.

It's not until five years after he writes that paper that finally people understand that this is a brilliant leap, and he's asked to be a professor at a university.

♪ Newt: A Nobel Peace Prize and worldwide fame followed.

Greer: His work was mostly theoretical, and, in fact, what brought him to Caltech was some glance into maybe experimental validation of some of his theories.

♪ Newt: In the early 1930s, Einstein's status as a Jew made him a focus of the Nazi Party.

He was no longer allowed to teach and was targeted for assassination.

Einstein fled Germany and toured Europe.

And at a certain point, I think when they destroyed his country house and raided it, he decided, "No.

I'm not going back to Germany.

I'm gonna stay away."

[Applause] Narrator: Here's Albert Einstein, probably the greatest brain of modern times, arriving from Germany.

♪ Guelzo: Einstein is fascinated by the optimism of Americans, that Americans don't seem to believe that there is any mountain they can't climb, that there's no river they can't cross, that there's no goal they can't achieve.

It's one reason why Einstein, unlike some of the others, Einstein decides to come and stay.

He's fleeing the nightmare that Germany has become.

♪ Callista: Einstein visited Caltech-- the world-renowned science and engineering institute in Pasadena, California-- in the early 1930s.

Greer: They put him up at the Athenaeum-- it's our Greek cathedral-looking faculty club, and there's now an Einstein suite in there-- but he was already a celebrity kind of beyond the scientific world, so they brought all these actors, he went to see all these shows, and he went to every social gathering, and his new wife Elsa, so they came here, and they had the best time.

What he really enjoyed was these conversations with colleagues, because it's a little bit isolating.

It's a little bit lonely to be a theory person, so he really craved that kind of intellectual engagement, and Caltech was the epicenter of astronomy experiments and observations and physics in general, and so he really found his soulmates, scientific soulmates here.

People would come and see him.

People would come and tell their stories, and he loved it.

He just loved all the attention, and Caltech kids would absolutely go and knock on his door.

♪ Callista: Einstein eventually settled in America at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.

Guelzo: Albert Einstein comes here to Princeton, lives literally just down the street from where I'm talking right now, and there in America, he makes some of the most remarkable contributions to physical science that anyone has made since Isaac Newton, and that underscores something extraordinary about immigration, and that is what it brings to us.

Callista: Einstein became an American citizen in 1940.

A lifelong pacifist, Einstein was asked to help write a letter to President Roosevelt on the eve of World War II warning that German scientists were working to develop an atomic bomb.

Newt: The possibility that E=mc^2 could lead to a powerful atomic weapon by the splitting of a uranium atom horrified Einstein, yet he urged FDR to consider his own nuclear program.

Isaacson: And when Franklin Roosevelt gets that letter, he says, "We must act on this," and he starts the Manhattan Project to build the bomb.

♪ Callista: Albert Einstein died in 1955 at the age of 76.

He called his final research on a unified field theory a failure.

Einstein's dream was to discover an all-encompassing framework for the mysteries and forces of the universe.

Greer: He was really trying to reconcile the discrepancies that he discovered in physics, so what he started to work towards at the end of his career was this unified theory, and it wasn't working.

Isaacson: I don't think Einstein was ever depressed about it, but it humbled him.

He said, "This is our quest as humans, to try to understand nature," and the good Lord didn't make it easy for us.

We know he didn't play dice with the universe, but we have to be humbled and awed at the spirit manifest in the laws of the universe.

♪ On his deathbed, Einstein gets nine sheafs of paper and everybody's gone home.

It's 9 P.M., and late that night-- he knows he's dying; an aorta has burst-- he writes page after page of equations, still trying to get us to a unified theory that would end the uncertainty at the subatomic level, that would tie together relativity and quantum, or, to put it more simply, go back to that compass and explain why does the compass needle twitch and point north?

♪ Newt: Access to educational opportunities in the United States can result in substantial personal and professional growth.

It brought one young man from a home in Afghanistan with no electricity all the way to the White House.

♪ My name is Zalmay Khalilzad.

I was born in Afghanistan.

I came to the United States to pursue my dream of making a difference for myself and also to others, and I'm delighted that I did that.

Callista: Zalmay Khalilzad was born in the ancient city of Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan.

♪ Khalilzad: Well, it was a peaceful period in Afghanistan, surprisingly, given recent developments, but it was a poor country, underdeveloped.

We had no electricity.

I was part of a large family.

We were three brothers and four sisters.

My father was a civil servant.

My mother had never gone to school... ♪ but it was a pretty area, especially in the spring, I remember the poppy fields, red like a carpet in the spring... ♪ but I also remember the poverty.

My sister had what, in retrospect, was diagnosed to have been appendicitis, but she couldn't receive treatment in time.

I remember her suffering before she died, so it was a mixed picture, peaceful, nice, but also poor and a lot of suffering and poverty.

[Call to prayer over P.A.]

♪ Newt: The Khalilzad family moved to Kabul when Zalmay was in high school, where he excelled.

His high test scores earned him a nomination to become an American Field Service Exchange Student.

Khalilzad: I was one of the nominees to go to the United States and spend a year and live with an American family, unbelievable.

I was selected as one of the 19 or 20 students from Afghanistan and then made it to America.

♪ Well, I came to New York first.

It was August, unbelievable heat and humidity combined.

Landing in New York, it was an evening landing and to see all the electricity, the lights, and it felt like it went on and on forever.

In Afghanistan, there used to be a celebration every August, late in the month of the country's independence from the United Kingdom, and they used to put lights up, so we said, "What kind of celebration is going on here to see so many lights for so long?"

♪ but also the development, the tall buildings, traffic, the mixture of people, all amazing.

♪ It really created a crisis in my head as to what was wrong with us, Afghanistan, Afghans, that we were so poor and so undeveloped?

I came to a judgment that initially I felt maybe we are less smart but once I went to school and did well, and then I came to a judgment that it was the system that was different, and I fell in love with America.

It was the land of unlimited opportunity.

If you played by the rules and you followed your ambition, there is no limit to what you could achieve.

♪ Newt: Zalmay received his PhD at the University of Chicago.

A remarkable career followed with positions at Columbia University, the Pentagon, and the State Department.

He served in the Reagan administration and in both Bush administrations.

Khalilzad: When Bush 43 became president, I was initially the head of transition at the Pentagon, and then I worked for the President directly as a special assistant to him... ♪ and when 9/11 happened, he asked me if I would become his Presidential Envoy for Afghanistan, and then Presidential Envoy for Afghanistan and Iraq.

Newt: Khalilzad was uniquely positioned to use his knowledge of politics, personalities, and Middle Eastern culture.

Ambassadorships to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations followed, making him one of the most effective diplomats of our time.

♪ Khalilzad: In no other country could the story of what I experienced, representing America in war zones and to the world, but only in America something like this could happen.

Callista: Ambassador Khalilzad's naturalization ceremony was held in New York City, where he was teaching at Columbia University.

Like for most who apply for U.S. citizenship, it remains an unforgettable moment.

Khalilzad: It was very emotional, and I stood up and applauded, and after we were declared and welcomed, declared as Americans and welcome to family of American citizens, that led to others joining, as well, so it was quite an emotional day, and this is a unique country, a blessed country.

♪ I'm very much driven by making a difference.

As long as I am able to help to make things better, I will be active.

I'll remain active.

Living, to me, means contributing and making a difference.

♪ Callista: Immigrants are drawn to America for its abundant economic opportunities and the promise of political freedom.

This drew one young woman from Ukraine to eventually serve in the United States Congress.

♪ Spartz: My name is Victoria Spartz.

I was born in Ukraine, Soviet Ukraine at that time, and now I am a proud member of the United States Congress, representing the great State of Indiana.

♪ I grew up in Soviet Union under socialism and communism.

I've seen what's happened to Ukraine when Soviet Union fell apart in the nineties.

It was wild west, criminals and very, very tough times but also a lot of hope.

♪ Callista: Congresswoman Victoria Spartz's journey to the United States House of Representatives began in the small Ukrainian city of Nosivka, near Kyiv.

After meeting her future husband on a train in Europe, Victoria emigrated to the United States in 2000, with a master's degree in economics and an uncertain future.

And then I come to United States, I'm like, "OK.

I need to have a job."

No one cares about my fancy degrees.

I'm like, "Well, I have to do at least something with finance."

I went to local bank, and I said, "Well, I need to have a job.

What kind of job you have for me?"

and they said, "What about bank teller?"

I'm like, "I have no idea what bank teller is.

I'll take it."

Callista: Congresswoman Spartz worked her way from bank teller to CPA, to Chief Financial Officer for the Indiana Attorney General.

She earned an additional master's degree in accounting and started multiple businesses.

Well, I think, you know, for me, when I look at that, what the American Dream for me, it's freedom.

Be free.

♪ I really never wanted to work for someone else.

I always wanted to work for myself, but I always look, "OK. You started, "you have to learn and figure out, "and get some skills before you can work for yourself."

I always felt like I wanted to be business owner.

I want to be entrepreneur, and that's what you think about America.

You know, when you come from other country, think it's a country of opportunities.

You can come from anywhere you want, and you can start your own business.

You can start your own life and pursue happiness in whichever way you want.

♪ Newt: Congresswoman Spartz became a United States citizen in 2006.

She so impressed her fellow workers and friends that they urged her to run for political office.

Spartz: Well, I think, you know, I never really thought to be in politics, and then when you do become active and get things done, everyone, "Oh, Victoria, you need to do it.

You need to do it.

You know, we need you to run for office."

I'm like, "I can't imagine.

Me?

Ukrainian-born."

God, I'm like, "Are you kidding me?

Like, me running for office?

That's going to be crazy."

♪ Newt: After serving in the Indiana State Senate, she ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Congresswoman Spartz became the first Ukrainian-born female member of Congress, representing Indiana's 5th Congressional District.

Spartz: I think, you know, for me, when I look at my life and I'm thinking, "My gosh, if someone who can come with a one suitcase, "barely speaking English, "don't know anyone, "come into this great country, "and becoming part one of the most powerful institutions in the world."

And I'm so proud that strong, brave Ukrainians are willing to fight again and again to be free.

♪ Callista: Congresswoman Spartz has returned several times to Ukraine since the war started in February of 2022.

Spartz: When I went back to Ukraine, it's really surreal.

I'll be honest with you, reading books about World War II and my family, most of my family was killed during World War II, and, so, you've heard about it, but actually see with your own eyes... ♪ but it definitely very, you know, hard to see, very difficult to see but also very inspiring, the will of the Ukrainian people.

They badly want freedom.

They do not want to go back to socialist communist dictatorship... ♪ so it's tough, it's not easy, and some days, I'm looking, I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, what did I get myself into?"

and I sometimes have, like, days when it's like, "My gosh, where are we going?"

but I'm thinking, "You know what?

It is still the greatest country in the world," but it happened to me.

It cannot happen in too many countries, what really happened to me and a lot of other people in America... ♪ so it doesn't matter where you came from.

It doesn't matter if you have a Yankee accent.

You know, it still can be where, you know, people value where you want to be, what happiness you want to pursue, and people value hard work.

People value your integrity and are willing to fight for the values of our country, so I'm very hopeful for that.

♪ I truly believe that what made this the greatest country in the world, it's the most freedom for every individual and those freedoms are guaranteed by our founding principles, but what is unique about our country, we have a system where every individual can be empowered to have protections, of rights to life, liberty, and property and the limited function of government.

That is the only government is set up.

Don't tell you what to do, but protect your rights and freedoms... ♪ and I think it's very attractive for a lot of immigrants because a lot of immigrants come from environment, unfortunately, that it doesn't exist, and when you don't have these freedoms, you want to be free.

You want to pursue your happiness, and I think this mechanism is a strength and key of our Republic.

♪ ♪ Callista: From Independence Hall to the moon and beyond, legal immigrants have made America a more prosperous, safer, and freer nation.

♪ The American Dream means something different for every immigrant, but for generations of people from all over the world, their journey to America has at its core, a desire for freedom.

♪ Newt: Freedom and liberty are at the heart of their journey.

These ideas originated in our founding documents, "that all Men are created equal, "that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, "that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

♪ Hanssen: They really saw the possibility of creating a moral consensus among people from different linguistic backgrounds, people from different political backgrounds, people from different ethnic backgrounds, so there's a real universalism in the founding documents.

Allen: James Truslow Adams in 1931 talks about the American Dream, but it's really a throwback to the idea of the self-made man because what is expressed in the American Dream is the concept that anyone can advance in the United States, no matter where they start out in life, so the American Dream is things here get better all the time for everybody.

That's the American Dream.

♪