White House hosts "Celebration of Ethnic America" (07/07/96)

White House hosts "Celebration of Ethnic America"

WASHINGTON - President Bill Clinton hosted 200 ethnic leaders at the White House on June 14 as part of a "Celebration of Ethnic America." The two-and-a-half-hour meeting included briefings by the president, Vice-President Al Gore, Education Secretary Richard Riley and National Security Advisor Anthony Lake.

The president thanked the leaders for their service to America and their role in helping to make Americans understand the U.S. mission in the world community. "Today is Flag Day. It's a celebration of American citizenship and patriotism. And it's also, by coincidence, the six-month anniversary of the signing of the Dayton Accords on Bosnia. And to me those two days represent the very point I'm trying to make to you," he said.

President Clinton highlighted three principles inherent in his vision for America, the same principles that embody the immigrant experience: opportunity, responsibility and community.

"America's immigrants from all over the world came here to seize the opportunity of America's bounty; demonstrated enormous personal and family responsibility, which we need more and more of in America today; and did so in a way that built our communities, recognizing that individuals could not succeed divorced from strong families and strong communities and ultimately a strong country," he stated.

The president laid out his approach for the future of the country, discussing his domestic and foreign policy agendas. He called attention to the path on which he set out three-and-a-half years ago, focusing on keeping the American dream alive for all Americans and maintaining U.S. leadership in the world as the strongest force for peace, freedom and prosperity.

The president discussed his domestic agenda, describing efforts to put in place an economic strategy to create jobs and reduce the deficit, to increase investment in children through support of education and the environment, and to support a comprehensive anti-crime agenda. The president stressed the importance of building a strong middle class and described efforts to reform welfare, saying "the biggest thing we have to do for all the people that have been trapped on welfare is to recreate the conditions that made immigrants successful in America."

The president acknowledged the participants' unique understanding of the importance of U.S. engagement abroad. He thanked them for their support of the administration's continued efforts to resolve problems in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, the Middle East and Bosnia, and its work on a measured expansion of NATO.

The president emphasized his commitment to work closely with Central Europe, announcing that he has asked the first lady to travel there next month. "I've asked the first lady to go to the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia to reaffirm the commitment of the United States with the people of Central and Eastern Europe - and to the integrity and the independence of those peoples."

Americans of European and Mediterranean heritage participated in this event, including organization leaders, elected officials, teachers and businesspersons active in community organizations and networks. Americans of Albanian, Arab, Armenian, Baltic, Croatian, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Siberian, Slovak and Ukrainian heritage were among those present.

Ukrainian American participants included: Taras Bazyluk, speechwriter and aide to the director, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; Andrew Fedynsky, director, Ukrainian Museum Archives of Cleveland; Dorothy Dowzycky Furtney, director of contract compliance, Erie County Council on Children and Families, Buffalo, N.Y.; Anna Krawczuk, president, Ukrainian National Women's League of America; Julian E. Kulas, president, 1st Security Federation Savings Bank of Chicago; Alexander Kuzma, director of development, Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund; Walter Lupan, chaiman of the board of governors of the Ukrainian American Bar Association; Bozhena Olshaniwsky, president, Americans for Human Rights in Ukraine; and Melanne Starinshak Verveer, deputy assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff to the first lady.

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