Quotes About Immigrant

I haven't written about an immigrant experience because I haven't experienced that before and am focused on existential themes.

Never far from my thoughts are memories of being a little girl in Queens, N.Y., our family of five crowded in a small one-bedroom apartment, struggling to learn English and survive a new life in a new country, America. We humbly and gratefully still recall the kindnesses shown by strangers and neighbors who became new friends.

There is no Thanksgiving back in the old country where I come from. You know why? Because being thankful is a sin.

Im not from the States, so Thanksgiving, for me, was never a huge tradition.

It was also true that if the Lees were still in Laos, Lia would probably have died before she was out of infancy, from a prolonged bout of untreated status epilepticus. American medicine had both preserved her life and compromised it. I was unsure which had hurt her family more.

One American newspaper wholesaler told The New York Times that the Indians "basically replaced the old Jewish and Italian merchants and they've filled a tremendous void because nobody will put in the fourteen and sixteen-hour days that they do quite willingly and that you have to put in when running a newsstand.

I was 30 when 9/11 happened and I had lived exactly 15 years of life in America, so I was half American. I was a full-fledged New Yorker.

I tend to be a great optimist when it comes to the United States and the American way of life, I think precisely because I wasn't born into it.

In Land of Milk and Money , Anthony Barcellos mines rich family history to create a full-blooded tale that readers will find insightful, rewarding, and entertaining.

South Dakota even prohibited the use of the German language over the telephone.

The immigrant blame game is constant. Cynical politicians believe it drives poll numbers; cynical commentators believe it drives TV ratings.

I have been a Republican since I came to this country, fleeing communism when I was eight years old and Ronald Reagan was president.

All the best of you is in the old tongue, but when you speak your best in America you become a yokel, a dumb Norskie, and when you speak English, an idiot.

When he mentioned family, I could only think of my father, my real father, the Long Island janitor with the impenetrable accent and true-to-life smells. My mind returned away from what Joshie was saying and I pondered my father's humiliation. The humiliation of growing up a Jew in the Soviet Union, of cleaning piss-stained bathrooms in the States, of worshipping a country that would collapse as simply and inelegantly as the one he had abandoned.

There, I was ridiculed for being an inauthentic American, and now I am being charged with being an inauthentic Russian. I do not yet understand that this very paradox is the true subject of so-called immigrant fiction.

This is the superhumanity of the immigrant, but woe be to the all-too-human offspring living in the shadow of such strength.

She was missing more references than usual. White ignorant folk like me, she thought, we're the immigrants today.

I was raised by extremely strict - but also extremely loving - Chinese immigrant parents, and I had the most wonderful childhood! I remember laughing constantly with my parents - my dad is a real character and very funny. I certainly did wish they allowed to me do more things!

In the neighborhood where my studio is, in South Central Los Angeles, there are a lot of immigrant-owned businesses. I'm constantly amazed at the level of work they do. It's above anything. For me, I think I pattern myself on that work ethic.

I'm the daughter of refugees. The immigrant mentality is to work hard, be brave, and never give up in your pursuit of achieving the American dream.

Coming from immigrant Italian people, the one thing you do is work hard.

What inspired me to work so hard and to maintain my determination was seeing my mother. She was an immigrant and was struggling in America to make it by; that inspired me to work hard.

When a law enforcement officer apprehends an illegal immigrant, it makes no sense to simply release that individual who has been breaking our laws with no threat of sanction or penalty.

My parents didn't speak English. They learned it little by little. They realized that education was the ticket to a better future in their own rudimentary way. They kept the house clean, kept us on the straight and narrow, and none of us ever got into trouble with the law.