Quotes About Emigration

We left a lot of things behind - not only physical objects, but our friends and of course our families, pieces of ourselves - all for the chance to see that light in Maribel's eyes. It's been difficult, yes, but I would do it all again. People do what they have to do in this life. We try to get from one end of it to the other with dignity and with honor. We do the best we can.

What we've seen is too many Californians and veterans moving to other states across this country because California is just simply not affordable.

I was born in Africa. I came to California because it's really where new technologies can be brought to fruition, and I don't see a viable competitor.

My grandmother flew only once in her life, and that was the day she and her new husband ascended into the skies of Victorian London in the wicker basket of a hot-air balloon. They were soon to emigrate to Canada, and the aerial ride was meant to be a last view of their beloved England.

We are the second oldest state in the Union because too many of our young people are leaving Pennsylvania. They are leaving Pennsylvania behind for opportunities elsewhere.

Emigration is no longer a solution; it's a defeat. People are risking death, drowning every day, but they're knocking on doors that are not open.

Departure beyond the borders of my country is for me equivalent to death.

You got away from Palestine and the homeland. You got away from Brookline and the relatives. You got away from New York

I really wanted to get out of England.

I lived through many battles - the 1973, I was young; in 1982 with the Israeli invasions, and 2006 between Hezbollah and Israel. Before I emigrated to the States in '83, I had my own very black and white views of the Israelis and the Jews in general. But you start to understand that no matter what you think, there are two perspectives.

My dad was a womaniser, a gambler. He was violent. They thought if they left Scotland, they would leave the problems behind.

I obviously wouldn't say on nationwide TV that I thought America was racist, sexist, homophobic and violent if they asked me why I left. I would just say America wasn't a culture I felt comfortable in. But anybody with a brain would understand what I'm trying to say.

Certain stories, like my mom leaving when I was 15-years-old to go back to China because she didn't quite assimilate like we did, that was a moment that was very sad in my life.

Well, my relationship to America at the time I left was very limited.

In 1935, seven years before the Nazis fully implemented the Final Solution, Hitler advocated emigration and ghettoization as interim solutions to the Jewish problem. The Jews, Hitler said, must be "removed from all professions, ghettoized, restricted to a particular territory, where they can wander about, in accordance with their character, while the German people looks in, as one looks at animals in the wild."30

Gradually, like the emigration of an insidious, phantom population, Leningrad belonged more to the dead than to the living. The dead watched over streets and sat in snow-swamped buses. Whole apartment buildings were tenanted by them, where in broken rooms, dead families sat waiting at tables. Their dominion spread room by room, like lights going out in evening.

More broadly, it is vital for leaders to work across international boundaries to minimize the number of people who feel the need to leave their home countries in the first place.

Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time.

We carried life out here and set it down the way those ants carry eggs. And I was the leader. The westering was as big as God, and the slow steps that made the movement piled up and piled up until the continent was crossed. "Then we came down to the sea, and it was done." He stopped and wiped his eyes until the rims were red. "That's what I should be telling instead of stories." When Jody spoke, Grandfather started and looked down at him.

He was feeling totally lost, leaving his family and country for a place where he knew nobody and didn't even speak the language.

However, when my parents married in 1945, China was in turmoil and the possibility of returning grew increasingly remote, and they decided to begin their family in the United States.

My fervent hope is that it would be possible for me and my family to leave for the U.S. on Hillary Clinton's plane.

In late June they arrived in Independence, Missouri, on a stretch of the Missouri River known for its "jumping-off places" — settlements where emigrants met traveling companions or killed time until their parties arrived, before heading west.

I'm an exile. My father had the courage to leave with his wife, his mother and three children under twelve. It took more courage to leave, to sacrifice everything for freedom, than to stay.