There's something about these steps [in Oval Office] and thinking about everybody who's walked here and all the business that's been done here.

Nobody gets to threaten the full faith and credit of the United States just to extract political concessions.

Perfect is unattainable. Better is possible.

We're not going to deputize a whole bunch of American citizens to start grabbing people or turning them in, in part because the ordinary American citizen may not know whether or not this person is illegal or not. But, you know, the notion that we're going to criminalize priests, for example, or doctors who are providing services to individuals, and throw them in jail for doing what their calling asks them to do, which is to provide help and service to people in need, I think that is a mistake. I think that's out of America's character.

In 2010 there were a lot of folks who were still out of work. There were a lot of folks who had lost their homes or saw their home values plummet, their 401k's plummet.

Now, as a nation, we don't promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That's an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.

If, in [Federal Housing Administration] application, black folks were excluded from it, then you have to override that by going after those discriminatory practices.