Quotes About Immigration

The typical Cuban machismo has attained alarming proportions in Miami. I did not want to stay too long in that place, which was like a caricature of Cuba, the worst of Cuba: the eternal gossip, the chicanery, the envy.

What's the border, Papi?' 'Hills,' Her father whispered. 'Hills and bushes, that's all it is. But we must walk across it.' 'Papi, if it's just land, why can't we take the bus all the way there. Why must we walk across?' 'Because we don't have papers, Carmen. And even though it is just land, it represents a wall. We must go like thieves.' Juana wished she could ask what the father meant by that. Hills and bushes, that's what the border was. How strange.

One foot remained rooted in our native soil while with our other foot we dug into American soil to anchor ourselves and weather the storm.

Cursed Sicilians." She spat into the sink. "Who wants them here?

Illegal immigration costs taxpayers $45 billion a year in health care, education, and incarceration expenses.

French people feel intellectually superior also assumes that the French therefore think Italians are suitable mainly for manual labor when emigrating to France.

had gone to work in Worcester's famous Washburn & Moen barbed wire factory: Swedes were preferred by employers there because, unlike the Irish, they did not tend to get either fighting drunk or unionized.

In 1790 Congress had limited naturalization (acquisition of United States citizenship) to free white persons only. With minor modifications, this racial qualification for citizenship stood on the books until 1952.

Takao Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178 (1922).

A fourth-grade teacher, shortly before beginning a unit on world cultures, passes out a form asking the children to fill out where their parents "are from." The bright child who raised her hand earlier hesitates, knowing that her parents are undocumented entrants who fear being discovered and deported.

About one hundred refugee physicists emigrated to the United States between 1933 and 1941.

About one hundred refugee physicists emigrated to the United States between 1933 and 1941.727

The boy who first entered a classroom barely able to speak English, twenty years later concluded his studies in the stately quiet of the reading room in the British Museum. Thus with one sentence I can summarize my academic career. It will be harder to summarize what sort of life connects the boy to the man.

We came when a lot of other Asian people came, after the law changed." "I remember that," I say. And I do, more or less. I remember Kennedy talking about the need for it—calling the old system of racist quotas intolerable—though it was Johnson who finally signed it.

I had a spot on one of the open lower decks, jammed with men, but my height granted me a view of the Statue of Liberty receding in the golden light, a sentimental sight that nevertheless provoked my sentiments. How many crimes, I wonder now—how many blunders worse than crimes—get committed in her name?

half the people in London were not English anyway: they were Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Caribbean, Indian and Chinese. All the drug dealers came from islands: Maltese men sold pep pills

Congress in the immigration law gives the president the power to restrict or suspend the entry of people he may deem appropriate.

I think there is no decent American living who could have worked in our Berlin Immigration section without acquiring a deep hatred for the government which drove these people like cattle from unfriendly consulate to unfriendly consulate, from blocked border to blocked border. Nothing was too petty for the mighty German government so long as it could do some harm to a harried Jew.

Some Americans need hyphens in their names, because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name.

Some Americans need hyphens in their names because only part of them has come over.

I don't even consider myself an American. If you and I were Americans, there'd be no problem. Those Honkies that just got off the boat, they're already Americans; Polacks are already Americans; the Italian refugees are already Americans. Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren't Americans yet.

Considering that less than 4 percent of the world's population are immigrants (living in a country they were not born in), the assumption that one's life chances are independent of one's country of origin is deceptive

My father described this tall lady who stands in the middle of the New York harbor, holding high a torch to welcome people seeking freedom in America. I instantly fell in love.

The browning of America worries the weak and the wicked. Walls and fences will not keep this country white. Look at me: it is obvious that someone hopped a fence.