This opportunity – to make it to the middle class or beyond no matter where you start out in life – it isn't bestowed on us from Washington. It comes from a vibrant free economy where people can risk their own money to open a business.

We have enshrined in our founding documents and promoted the fundamental truth, all around the world, that the rights of all men, women and children ,not simply Americans come from God.‎

The American dream is about achieving happiness. When you become a fire fighter, a police officer or a teacher or a nurse, you know you're not going to become a billionaire. And what my parents achieved working as a bartender and a maid at a hotel after arriving here with nothing, no education, no money. The first words my dad learned in English where I'm looking for a job.You know what my parents achieved? They owned a home in a safe and stable neighborhood. They retired with dignity and they left all four of their children better off than themselves.

Conservatism means re-embracing true free enterprise. True free enterprise, which I believe and not because my parents were wealthy, not because I inherited millions of dollars because I did not, but because as I walked on to the stage here today, I walked through the kitchen of this hotel and I met people and shook the hands of people who are doing the jobs my parents once did.

Immigration is not an issue that I read about in the newspaper or watch a documentary on PBS or CNN. It's an issues I've lived around my whole life. My family are immigrants. My wife's family are immigrants. All of my neighbors are immigrants.

These economic, social, cultural and educational causes of opportunity inequality are complex. And they will not be solved by continuing with the same stale Washington ideas. Five decades and trillions of dollars after President Johnson waged his War on Poverty, the results of this big-government approach are in.

Cuban agents are assigned to a Catholic Church where their instructions are to beat, jail and intimidate the Ladies In White that attend Mass and who afterwards peacefully take to the streets calling for the release of their husbands, sons and fathers who are political prisoners.