Tonight we offer ourselves--on our record and by our platform--as a party for all Americans, an all-American party for all Americans. This prosperous… - Lyndon B. Johnson

We will strengthen our military alliances, assist freedom-loving peoples, and continue our Military Assistance Program. It is essential to continue to strengthen our alliances with other free and independent nations. We reaffirm our unwavering determination that efforts to divide and conquer free men shall not be successful in our time. We shall continue to assist those who struggle to preserve their own independence. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a strong shield against aggression. We reaffirm our belief in the necessity of unified planning and execution of strategy. We invite our NATO allies to work with us in developing better methods for mutual consultation and joint strategic study. We shall continue to seek ways to bind the alliance even more strongly together by sharing the tasks of defense through collective action. We shall continue our program of military and economic assistance to Allies elsewhere in the world and to those nations struggling against covert aggression in the form of externally directed, undeclared guerrilla warfare. In Southeast Asia, our program remains unchanged. From 1950, the United States has demonstrated its commitment to the freedom, independence, and neutrality of Laos by strengthening the economic and military security of that nation. The problem of Laos is the refusal of the Communist forces to honor the Geneva Accords into which they entered in 1962. We shall continue to support the legitimate government of that country. The Geneva Accords established the right of Laos to be left alone in peace. Similarly, the problem of Vietnam is the refusal of Communist forces to honor their agreement of 1954. The North Vietnam regime, supported by the Chinese Communists, has openly and repeatedly avowed its intention to destroy the independence of the Republic of Vietnam through massive, ruthless, and incessant guerrilla terrorism against Government and people alike. Our purpose, under three American Presidents, has been to assist the Vietnamese to live in peace, free to choose both their own way of life and their own foreign policy. We shall continue to honor our commitments in Vietnam.

So I am happy to have you here in this home that you let me occupy. I saw Dick Nixon Saturday night. I met him coming back from Viet-Nam. I told him I wondered if he ran into Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller on their way out to Viet-Nam. Now, we have got a lot to do in Viet-Nam. Of course, Nixon was out there, as I understand it, working on Pepsi-Cola, I believe it was. But we have got work to do here, too, and one of the big jobs we have got to do is we have got to pass a civil rights bill. That will give Americans equal opportunity.

This bill says simply that from this day forth those wishing to immigrate to America shall be admitted on the basis of their skills and their close relationship to those already here. This is a simple test, and it is a fair test. Those who can contribute most to this country; to its growth, to its strength, to its spirit; will be the first that are admitted to this land. The fairness of this standard is so self-evident that we may well wonder that it has not always been applied. Yet the fact is that for over four decades the immigration policy of the United States has been twisted and has been distorted by the harsh injustice of the national origins quota system. Under that system the ability of new immigrants to come to America depended upon the country of their birth. Only 3 countries were allowed to supply 70 percent of all the immigrants. Families were kept apart because a husband or a wife or a child had been born in the wrong place. Men of needed skill and talent were denied entrance because they came from southern or eastern Europe or from one of the developing continents. This system violated the basic principle of American democracy; the principle that values and rewards each man on the basis of his merit as a man. It has been un-American in the highest sense, because it has been untrue to the faith that brought thousands to these shores even before we were a country. Today, with my signature, this system is abolished. We can now believe that it will never again shadow the gate to the American nation with the twin barriers of prejudice and privilege. Our beautiful America was built by a nation of strangers. From a hundred different places or more they have poured forth into an empty land, joining and blending in one mighty and irresistible tide. The land flourished because it was fed from so many sources; because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples. And from this experience, almost unique in the history of nations, has come America's attitude toward the rest of the world. We, because of what we are, feel safer and stronger in a world as varied as the people who make it up; a world where no country rules another and all countries can deal with the basic problems of human dignity and deal with those problems in their own way. Now, under the monument which has welcomed so many to our shores, the American nation returns to the finest of its traditions today. The days of unlimited immigration are past. But those who do come will come because of what they are, and not because of the land from which they sprung.