Immigrants Quotes - Page 18

• In the war on terrorism, the immigrant is often the scapegoat.

  Andrew Lam

  War, Terrorism, Scapegoat

  "‘Birds of Paradise Lost’: A Conversation With Author Andrew Lam". Interview with Anna Challet, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 5, 2013.

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• All three of my books, "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora," "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres," and "Birds of Paradise Lost," are immigrant narratives - their dreams, their traumas, their struggles - and I write them with the confidence that these stories, written from the heart, will belong, in time, to America.

  Andrew Lam

  Dream, Struggle, Book

  "‘Birds of Paradise Lost’: A Conversation With Author Andrew Lam". Interview with Anna Challet, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 5, 2013.

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• I might add, the whites who came here only say 50 years ago as immigrants have come into this country, they have set up businesses. They've developed these businesses into an industry.

  Malcolm X

  Country, Years, Add

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• So how do Latinos feel if there's a big investment just in the African American community, and they're looking around and saying, "We're poor as well. What kind of help are we getting?" Or Asian Americans who say, "Look, I'm a first-generation immigrant, and clearly I didn't have anything to do with what was taking place."

  Barack Obama

  Community, African American, Asian

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• I say that is because those are the times where sometimes you feel actually a little bit hurt. Because you feel like saying to these folks, "[Don't] you think if I could do it, I [would] have just done it. Do you think that the only problem is that I don't care enough about the plight of poor people, or gay people, or immigrants, or ...?"

  Barack Obama

  Hurt, Gay, Thinking

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• Going back to the discussion we were having about immigration reform, some of the most challenging discussions I've had are with activists who essentially would argue that any immigrant from Central America, let's say, who gets here to this country should be allowed to stay because their country is dangerous, their country is poor, and the opportunities for that mom and that kid are much greater here, and why would you send them back?

  Barack Obama

  Mom, Country, Kids

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• I'll also tell you that to no less extent my mom, who was the daughter of Irish immigrants.

  Mike Pence

  Mom, Daughter, My Mom

  Source: www.dailyjournal.net

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• This grandson of an Irish immigrant, after whom I was named, Richard Michael Cawley is my grandfather. I was right that - and I always tell kids that, you know, if my small life represents anything is that if you work hard, you study hard, and you never give up on your dreams and listen to people that care about, you can live those dreams. And for me to be up on the platform standing with my right hand in the air in the presence of my family and our new president [Donald Trump], it just tells me this is a great country. My grandfather was right.

  Mike Pence

  Dream, Country, Giving Up

  Source: www.dailyjournal.net

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• When people are not sure about their future, when their economies are suffering, when their personal fortunes are flagging, we have often in this country turned to nativism and xenophobia and racism and anti-immigrant sensibilities and passions to express our sense of outrage at what we can't control - and to forge a kind of fitful solidarity that turns out to be rather insular - we look inward and not outward.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Country, Xenophobia, Passion

  "Michael Eric Dyson Wants White People to Step Up and Actually Do Something About Racism". Interview With Will Greenberg, www.motherjones.com. January 18, 2017.

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• If you read social media, you can see how immigration is such a hot-button debate and [a hotbed] of ignorance. You know there's guys that say immigrants come here, and they create so much crime and they take jobs. There's multiple sides to every story.

  George Lopez

  Jobs, Ignorance, Media

  Source: www.washingtontimes.com

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• I am hopeful that the pendulum swings toward seeing immigrants in favorable terms once more.

  Andrew Lam

  Swings, Hopeful, Pendulums

  "‘Birds of Paradise Lost’: A Conversation With Author Andrew Lam". Interview with Anna Challet, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 5, 2013.

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• Immigration is not an issue that I read about in the newspaper or watch a documentary on PBS or CNN. It's an issues I've lived around my whole life. My family are immigrants. My wife's family are immigrants. All of my neighbors are immigrants.

  Marco Rubio

  Pbs, Issues, Cnn

  Source: cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com

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• There's nothing more true in being a child of a diaspora, a child of immigrants. We're completely new to our parents. We're not something they can ever understand. And it's not as if we are ever going to be accepted. We're accepted as long as we conform to what we are expected to be, and I'm sure that's not any different for anyone else.

  Junot Diaz

  Children, Long, Parent

  Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. March 8, 2008.

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• I think a lot of the most interesting immigrant writing involves stepping outside of that old, dreary binary. Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker is a great example. Same goes for Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior.

  Junot Diaz

  Writing, Warrior, Thinking

  Interview with Gina Frangello, therumpus.net. September 30, 2012.

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• I met Muslim immigrants in Brooklyn who were swept up in 9-11 raids, held in abusive conditions, beaten, denied rights. That's how things started in Germany. Guantanamo was modeled after what Stalin developed for the Gulag.

  Naomi Wolf

  Rights, Germany, Brooklyn

  "Naomi Wolf Thinks the Tea Parties Help Fight Fascism -- Is She Onto Something or in Fantasy Land?". Interview with Justine Sharrock, www.alternet.org. March 29, 2010.

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• In real life, there are right-wingers, there are anti-immigrant activists who want to overturn this constitutional right that we have to become Americans when we're born in this country. There's lots of people who believe that this has led to the phenomenon of the anchor babies. I am an anchor baby. My parents were able to receive their residency and citizenship because, I, a U.S. citizen child of theirs, was born in Los Angeles.

  Hector Tobar

  Country, Baby, Children

  Source: www.slate.com

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• I'm a radical pro-immigration advocate. I'm not saying we just look at the Muslim world or we just look at China, we just look at India as a source of our talent. But, one thing we know... first or second generation or new immigrants or children of immigrants have started about 40% of the Fortune 500 companies. For me it's always been a really very important issue that I want America to be open to the most energetic and talented people from around the world.

  Thomas Friedman

  Children, America, Issues

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• All one needs to do is just to go to any hospital in America and see the number of Pakistani or Indian or Lebanese, or Syrian, or Egyptian doctors, who are either first generation or themselves immigrants, to know, and I'm a big believer - brains are distributed evenly around the world. What aren't distributed evenly are opportunities, stable government, educational institutions, etc.

  Thomas Friedman

  Educational, Opportunity, Doctors

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• I don't know what the average income of Muslim-Americans is, but Muslim-American immigrants of recent vintage, I bet they have a very above-average representation in professional and business occupations.

  Thomas Friedman

  Average, Vintage, Income

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• Why is it Muslims from Pakistan or from Egypt come to America and thrive, and they are frustrated back home? It's about clean government. It's about a rule of law. It's about intellectual property protection. They've got all the talent and energy of anybody else. As new immigrants they may have more of it, so you put them in our system and they become doctors, lawyers, and businessmen and entrepreneurs.

  Thomas Friedman

  Home, Doctors, Government

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• I think a lot of people are trying to scare immigrants. But in reality, they have nothing to fear. You know, people who behave need not worry. Foreigners in France who hold a job, who respect our laws, our codes, have absolutely nothing to worry about.

  Marine Le Pen

  Jobs, Reality, Thinking

  Source: www.cbsnews.com

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• My mum thought my TV and film addiction was laziness. If you're an immigrant, you know you'll never be an accepted part of society, but you hope your children will be, and you try to make them essential to the community in a practical way - being a doctor or a lawyer. Acting was beyond their comprehension.

  Sanjeev Bhaskar

  Children, Doctors, Addiction

  "Sanjeev Bhaskar: Goodness, I'm home!". Interview with Tina Jackson, www.theguardian.com. December 3, 2010.

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• As a child, I remember asking my parents when I was five years old, "How come if you are not Zionists, you came to the country?" I was surprised at myself that I asked this question. It means that it was always in the air. Then years later I understood it was because of the Holocaust, because they were refugees. They did not come as immigrants and, because of the illusions of the '50s and the late '40s, my mother said, "The world must be better." She could not imagine that it wouldn't be different.

  Amira Hass

  Country, Mother, Children

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• We should be the pro-legal immigration party. A party that has a positive platform and agenda on how we can create a legal immigration system that works for immigrants and works for America.

  Marco Rubio

  Positive, Party, America

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• American literature has always been immigrant.

  Salman Rushdie

  Literature, American Literature

  "Salman Rushdie: the fatwa, Islamic fundamentalism and Joseph Anton". Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. September 16, 2012.

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