Obama: Illegals Are Americans Too, They Just Don’t Have the Papers

OBAMA: "And what that means is that instead of focusing on families, we're going to focus on felons. We're going to strengthen our borders, which is what people are concerned about. We're going to build on what we did in 2012 with DACA, which allowed young people who had come here and were Americans in all respects except they didn't have the proper papers to get legal, so that they could continue in their higher education, or serving in the military."
BALART: "They know no other country."
OBAMA: "They know no other country. And this approach of executive actions has been used by previous Republican and Democratic presidents throughout modern times. Now, what we did most recently was to expand that so more people would be eligible for DACA and if you're a parent of a legal resident, if you've been here for a while, if you're part of our community, you should be able to come forward, get registered, go through a background check, and if you generally have been contributing to our community, you should be able to stay here legally and not be in fear of deportation. It did not provide citizenship because only Congress could do that, but it was going to help. And I think we saw the reaction in the community, and the truth is, across the country people recognized this was the right thing and the smart thing to do."