The John F. Kennedy Center is hosting a musical this month titled “First You Dream.” When I noticed the ad, I thought about President Obama’s initiative through the Department of Homeland Security to allow undocumented immigrant youth to continue school or work without fear of deportation. Now, those young people can dream, too.

That’s the way this country started: with dreams. We’ve been a nation of immigrants who first dreamed of better lives. Even before the Statue of Liberty welcomed “the huddled masses yearning to be free,” we welcomed the hardworking and the hopeful.

I’m a Democrat, but I’m first and foremost a citizen. And it’s as a citizen that I’m grateful we have a president who is not afraid to take risks — even when failure (or success!) could cost his re-election. He went after Osama bin Laden when others said they wouldn’t. He passed the first and only national health care legislation — something many other presidents have advocated, but which caused extraordinary bitterness among congressional Republicans. He voiced his personal support for marriage equality. And when Congress refused to pass the DREAM Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrant children, he ordered immigration officials to stop deporting them until Congress did move.