"We’ll have lost the soul of the country, and I would argue we’re in danger of losing it now," Joe Biden said. | AP Photo Biden: Furor over Syrian refugees threatens America's 'soul'

Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday warned that the United States' promise of possibility and optimism, including toward those seeking refuge, is currently slipping away, and it is endangering the country's "soul."

“It’s always been true in this country. And if we ever lose that, then we will have lost something incredibly special and consequential here in the United States. We’ll have lost the soul of the country, and I would argue we’re in danger of losing it now. That’s why I’m here," he said during a speech in front of the Aspen Institute Summit on Inequality and Opportunity at the Newseum in Washington in which he also decried a shrinking middle class and a lack of opportunity for all.


Around the same time, down Pennsylvania Avenue, members of the House approved a bill that would bar Syrian and Iraqi refugees from entering the country unless they pass strict background checks. President Barack Obama has threatened to veto the legislation.

Recalling a meeting with former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew last year before his death this March, Biden said that Chinese President Xi Jinping had wondered to him why the U.S. is the only nation in the world that has been consistently able to remake itself.

“I said there’s two things. First, they’ll find an unrelenting stream of immigration in significant waves since 1735 on, with occasional xenophobic response, but always ultimately not in drips and drabs and major waves, and I said that has given us a tremendous advantage because we have been able to cherry-pick the most capable people of every culture," Biden said.

The second thing he told Lee, Biden relayed, is that naturalized and native-born Americans alike "have an overwhelming skepticism [of] orthodoxy."

"When I say that this is a special place, it’s a special place because of — not in spite of but because of — and it’s a political statement. It’s, I think, a historical fact. Because of our diversity is the reason why we are who are," he added. "What makes America is that everyone in this nation believes — at least did — and everyone seeking refuge in this nation believes this is a place where you have opportunity, where there’s an opportunity to succeed. That’s all of us. I mean all of us."