"We can find common ground here, and we must. We owe it to ourselves as Americans to ensure that our country remains a land of opportunity - both for those who were born here and for those who share our values, respect our laws, and want to come to our shores."

-- Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney speaking at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference in Orlando.

The story of American politics is in many ways the story of American immigration.

Our foundation is British, but the remarkable structure we have built upon it is in large part the work of wave after wave of immigrants.

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The first American political transformation, the Jacksonian Revolution, was a direct result of a decades-long influx of Scots-Irish Presbyterians who flooded through the Cumberland Gap and quickly populated the fertile lands beyond.

The Civil War and the end of slavery were results of the waves of German and Irish immigrants who fled religious persecution, famine and European chaos.