Quotes About Immigrant

When you come from Poland, you have nothing. Your mother and father are working. You have only a bed for sleep. You have a kitchen, and that's it. You must fight.

My mother's Polish; my dad was Irish.

Even though I moved to Florida, I'm still Polish.

Being an immigrant mother can be hard, but being a poor immigrant mother is much harder. You don't generally get to sit in cafes polishing your French by reading 'Le Monde.'

My father, who was illiterate, smoothed iron for Ford Dagenham and we'd get up at 5;30 A.M. to give him a jump-start. My mother was a nurse and part of the Windrush generation. Growing up in east London, we were financially poor, but rich in hope and dignity, and we were happy.

Growing up in America, I experienced two puberties. The first opened me up to the possibilities of adulthood. The second reinforced that for someone like me - an immigrant, a minority, an Asian-American - there were limits.

No matter how American I become, I'm considered part of the Chinese community by my own family.

I'm Cuban-American, everybody says. I have a Cuban background, Cuban blood.

As a first-generation American, my parents expected that I would go on to have pretty tactical higher-education-type jobs - doctor, lawyer, engineer. Those were the three options. My dad was not at all open to the idea that there would not be a higher education in my future.

My Taiwanese parents came to America with no money and supported my brothers and me as small business owners in Orange County, which is close to L.A. but about as far away from Hollywood as you can be.

Lucy Mercedes Martinez, my mother, was probably my first mentor. She really tried to take care of me in spite of myself, and in spite of her own struggles with alcohol. She was an immigrant who had never finished school. But she was also a Renaissance woman who read voraciously. She spoke several languages.

I've always said that Miguel Pinero's story is a quintessential American tale. An immigrant who comes to this country, is immediately marginalized to the lowest economic level and persecuted because of his skin color and, in spite of all the obstacles put in his way, he becomes a huge popular success.

I talked about the persecution of Algerians and told about racism in my childhood. And it was as if, after that, I wasn't French anymore.

Baba dropped the stack of food stamps on her desk. Thank you but I don't want, Baba said. I work always. In Afghanistan I work, in America I work. Thank you very much, Mrs. Dobbins, but I don't like it free money....Baba walked out of the welfare office like a man cured of a tumor.

Khaled Hosseini

Hitler wasn't a senior officer – in four years of war, he rose no higher than the rank of corporal. He had no formal education, no professional skills and no political background. He wasn't a successful businessman or a union activist, he didn't have friends or relatives in high places, nor any money to speak of. At first, he didn't even have German citizenship. He was a penniless immigrant.

But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears - dissolution, disappearance.

Alien. An American sovereign in his probationary state.

The truth, Your Honor, is that the immigrant feels at home in guilt... the guilt of having abandoned my parents. A slippery slope, this. My father, my mother, my motherland, my mother tongue.

From one people, faithful to the Torah, come the messages, "You must love your neighbor as yourself," and "Any immigrant who lives with you must be treated as if they were one of your citizens" (Leviticus 19:18, 34). When these commandments are kept, by all who hold the text as sacred, the hungry are fed.

You say your city the way some Americans say this is their country. You never feel right saying that - my country. For some reason looking Mexican means you can't be American.

My first job out of college was six weeks of picking fruit alongside a dozen or so men from Mexico. The orchard was in Emmett, Idaho. The men spent almost nothing on themselves. Their paychecks went directly to their families back home.

I was an immigrant when I came, and one of my biggest things was I really wanted to fit in. I didn't want to be, 'Oh, look at that guy;' I wanted to be part of the crowd. Which is a weird thing, because the more successful I got, the more out of the crowd I became.

When I arrived in the U.S., I knew little English and didn't have any friends. The neighborhood and school kids were so welcoming. They made me feel at home very quickly.