Quotes About Immigrant

was careful, then, to present myself as just another immigrant, glad to be in the land where the pursuit of happiness was guaranteed in writing, which, when one comes to think about it, is not such a great deal. Now a guarantee of happiness—that's a great deal. But a guarantee to be allowed to pursue the jackpot of happiness? Merely an opportunity to buy a lottery ticket.

Viet Thanh Nguyen

Royalty has always been an unconscious but all-consuming goal of the European immigrant.

My dad worked in a very typical first-generation immigrant fashion - 24 hours a day for years.

As a family they still flew the flight of the immigrant rocket, the upward, unbroken immigrant trajectory from slave-driven great-grandfather to self-driven grandfather to self-confident, accomplished, independent father to the highest high flier of them all, the fourth-generation child for whom America was to be heaven itself. No wonder he couldn't shut up.

Catholic and Italian boys whose fathers worked on the docks at the port

I grew up in the U.K., and my parents are both doctors.

I consider myself an embodiment of the American dream: an all-American Indian.

The stories I always see about a first-generation kid trying to erase where they came from, or trying to just be white, I would watch those shows or movies and I was like, 'I don't get this.' This isn't how I feel.

I couldn't be more American if I tried. I was born in Ethiopia, but I was raised and educated as an American.

I am your boy drowning in this country, who doesn't know the word for drowning and yells I am diving for the last time!

This was mere unfounded prejudice--that seems obvious to me--because neither before nor after existed, nor any place to immigrate from, but there were those who insisted that the concept of "immigrant" could be understood in the abstract, outside of space and time.

I came to Canada as a teenager with no money, no contacts, and no knowledge of English.

I mean, I'm a Ukrainian immigrant from Brooklyn who grew up dancing and playing the violin!

I was the kid who didn't speak English, with a violin and ballroom dance shoes.

My dad got a job as a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. He teaches biology and genetics. My dad has been obsessed with science his whole life. Both my paternal grandparents were illiterate bamboo farmers, so he really worked his way up and then got a Ph.D., full ride and everything, from universities in America.

There's virtually nothing made up in 'The Immigrant.' So much of the film came from somewhere in my family's past. All the details are from my own family.

Step one of the initial process of getting a non-immigrant visa is tough, renewing it is tough, and then transferring from the status of non-immigrant to immigrant or green card is tough. The only process which is easy is the last part of transferring from green card to citizenship, but getting there is quite a journey.

I was born in Sri Lanka.

I came to America when I was six. In true African form, my parents wanted me to be a doctor or lawyer or engineer.

I moved to New York when I was eight years old, in 1978. I grew up in Manhattan. I couldn't speak any English, and I had dyslexia, so it took me many years before I could read.

We are not native. We have no generations of Americans behind us. We have roots elsewhere. We are looking in from the outside. To me, that seems to be perfectly natural.

Germans found American (by which they often meant Irish) bars and their drinking customs both peculiar and unhealthy.

In the United States, the immigrant experience occupies a very central place in American mythology. And sometimes, that place wavers between acceptance and rejection.