Quotes About Immigrant

In high school the very first job I got was I worked as a cashier in Burgerville, which is this fast food place in Oregon. I kind of grew up to be a spoiled little kid so my dad was like, 'You're going to get a job for the summer!' I was this clueless immigrant like, 'May I take your order? Sorry sir, I don't know what I'm doing!'

My family comes from Panama, and I grew up in a single parent household with my mother, who barely spoke English. She couldn't get a good job, yet there were four of us for her to raise.

I went by myself to Hollywood, I spoke no English, every day I had to go to school.

I am an American, but a sense of otherness was part of my growing up. I spoke Norwegian before I spoke English. My mother is Norwegian.

Just classic immigrant story - I mean, child of immigrant story - did not grow up with cable and so felt constantly like I was being spoken to in a foreign language when I would go to school. And people would be like, did you watch this? Did you watch that? I'd be like, no, but I did watch 'SNL.'

Fortunately, the leadership of black immigrant communities has always been present in all black liberation movements from leaders like Marcus Garvey to Shirley Chisholm to Malcolm X and Harry Belafonte. We know this is our legacy.

I want people to understand my journey and to be inspired by that. You can be an immigrant, and if you work really hard, you can have your own restaurant.

One of the great pluses of being an immigrant is you get to start again in terms of your identity. You get to shed the narratives which cling to you.

I come from an immigrant family, but I know no other nationality apart from British.

The Grinbergs drew upon Melanie Klein's psychoanalytic theories40 and showed how guilt over loss of parts of the self—that is, the immigrant or the refugee's previous identity and his or her investment in the land and people left behind—may complicate the newcomer's mourning process

She worked like a dog to support us, doing whatever she had to do, but each night, at bedtime, she kissed me good night and told me I could be anything in America. It was the dream that had brought her here and she passed it on to me. But, it was a lie. For people like us, anyway. Folks who are from the wrong place, or have the wrong color skin, or speak the wrong language, or pray to the wrong God.

Whiteness has already recruited us to become their junior partners in genocidal wars; conscripted us to be antiblack and colorist; to work for, and even head, corporations that scythe off immigrant jobs like heads of wheat. Conscription is every day and unconscious. It is the default way of life among those of us who live in relative comfort, unless we make an effort to choose otherwise.

If the indebted Asian immigrant thinks they owe their life to America, the child thinks they owe their livelihood to their parents for their suffering. The indebted Asian American is therefore the ideal neoliberal subject. I accept that the burden of history is solely on my shoulders; that it's up to me to earn back reparations for the losses my parents incurred, and to do so, I must, without complaint, prove myself in the workforce.

Whiteness has already recruited us to become their junior partners in genocidal wars; conscripted us to be antiblack and colorist; to work for, and even head, corporations that scythe off immigrant jobs like heads of wheat. Conscription is every day and unconscious.

Like the stutterer who pronounces their words flawlessly through song, the immigrant writes their English beautifully through poetry.

If the indebted Asian immigrant thinks they owe their life to America, the child thinks they owe their livelihood to their parents for their suffering. The indebted Asian American is therefore the ideal neoliberal subject.

Three Chinese laborers died for every two miles of track built to make Manifest Destiny a reality, but when the celebratory photo of the Golden Spike was taken, not a single Chinese man was welcome to pose with the other—white—railway workers.

In 1918, a Chinese immigrant working in a Los Angeles noodle factory invented the fortune cookie. He did so believing that a cookie with a positive message in it would raise the spirits of the city's poor.

My mother emigrated from Russia as a young child. She couldn't speak English and had no education. Her father died at age 32, leaving the family destitute. An uncle, who worked as a carpenter, supported the family.

My uncle was the first brown person to have a market stall on Petticoat Lane in the 1960s. He worked his way up from the street. He was homeless, but eventually he got a car so he could sell from the boot. And by the 1980s, he was a millionaire wholesaling to companies like Topshop. So in a way, fashion put me in England.

When I think of my work, I'm aware that I'm American and African at all points and times. And without a doubt, my experience and understanding of America was shaped by having immigrant parents.

I was very heartened by Rupert Murdoch's passionate interest in immigration reform. He is an immigrant himself. He understands from a business perspective how important immigration reform would be to our economy.

Every single immigrant we have, undocumented or documented, is a future American. That's just the truth of it.

My grandfather was an undocumented immigrant. My great-grandmother, my bisabuela, carried him over the border in her arms.