Quotes About Immigration

It is a fairly simple matter to walk to Mexico at any point, but there is always a crush of people—all of them with documents—waiting to enter the US to work, go to school, or shop.

And there are more than twenty-one thousand Border Patrol agents who work day and night to thwart them.

The justification for the United States government's barbaric and inhumane violence to the families was a biblical injunction to submit, preached by the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, smiling over his notes: "Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to [sic] the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.

I had slipped into Mexico in a matter of minutes; returning, it took more than two hours in a line of uncomplaining Mexicans

The solution is simple: if we passed a law requiring United States farmers to hire only men with entry visas and work permits, there would be no problem. There is no such law. The farm lobby has made sure of that, for if there were no Mexicans to exploit, how would these barrel-assed slavers be able to harvest their crops?

I don't want to go to the United States," Mario, another of the old men, said, and he pointed—four blocks north was the fence. "My family is here. I was born here. This is my home.

Operation Hold the Line in 1993 in the El Paso sector.

It is rare in Mexico to meet someone who has no family connection to the US.

Many Mexicans I met—working in hotels, restaurants, and shops, driving taxis—had held jobs in the States and been thrown out.

in 1990, a fifteen-year-old boy was climbing the fence, and when he got to the top, a Border Patrol agent shot him. He fell back onto the Mexico side and he died.

An implication in all books about the country is that, though Europeans successfully emigrate to Mexico and become Mexican, no American can follow suit: the gringo remains incorrigibly a gringo.

This Mexican hospitality to gringos is in ironic contrast to the present ubiquity of Mexicans who are demonized and fenced in, stamped as undesirable, considered suspect, and unwelcome in America.

But it got worse and worse." He sighed. "Politics!" "Ours or yours?" "Both! Our government is bad, yours—well, you know the talk. 'Mexicans are criminals and rapists.' And really, I was working hard, and all the Mexicans I knew were good workers.

Many Americans were bewildered by having to accommodate themselves to the resettlement of Syrian, Somali, and Afghan refugees—their care and feeding—when many local communities were hard-up.

on the border itself, the US immigration officer answered one of my questions by saying, "I have no idea. I don't have a clue. I have never been there"—and raised his blue arm and the yellow nail of his hairy finger to point across fifty feet of sunny road to Mexico.

America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.

If the country were open on its borders, new forms would certainly immigrate, and this would also seriously disturb the relations of some of the former inhabitants. Let it be remembered how powerful the influence of a single introduced tree or mammal has been shown to be.

You like Nick a lot, don't you, Nora? Dorothy asked. He's an old Greek fool, but I'm used to him. Charles isn't a Greek name. It's Charalambides, I explained. When the old man came over, the mugg that put him through Ellis Island said Charalambides was too long...too much trouble to write... and whittled it down to Charles. It was all right with the old man; they could have called him X so they let him in.

But while Sasha told us that in America even the most successful men can have but one wife at once--my father had six--and talked about escalators, indoor plumbing, and the various laws of the land, he did not warn us that I would be told by American teenagers that I should go back to Africa.

We discuss calling the police. We have to quickly review anything that could go wrong if we do. Are our immigration papers in order? They are. Do we have outstanding parking tickets? I have three, Achor Achor two. We calculate whether or not we have enough in checking accounts to pay the tickets if the police demand it. We decide that we do.

We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants into this country.

Let's secure the border, figure out who is here illegally, and offer them a pathway to citizenship. Likewise, let's take in new immigrants in numbers that will help our economy, rather than make them reliant on the citizens who are already here.

I'm afraid of Americans.

If the government would build a good fence and man it properly, we could actually control this border