Immigrants Quotes

This has been the century of strangers, brown, yellow and white. This has been the century of the great immigrant experiment. It is only this late in the day that you can walk into a playground and find Isaac Leung by the fish pond, Danny Rahman in the football cage, Quang O’Rourke bouncing a basketball, and Irie Jones humming a tune. Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical checks. It is only this late in the day, and possibly only in Willesden, that you can find best friends Sita and Sharon, constantly mistaken for each other because Sita is white (her mother liked the name) and Sharon is Pakistani (her mother thought it best — less trouble).

~ Zadie Smith

Her occupation was the worst that anyone could think of. No guest in the park had to think of it because, unlike the wandering dwarf women, her job had no bearing on paper.

~ Pam Jones

A third layer of nativeness was composed of those whom others thought directly descended, even the tiniest fraction of their genes, from the human beings who had been brought from Africa centuries ago as slaves. While this layer of nativeness was not vast in proportion of the rest, it had vast importance, for society had been shaped in reaction to it. An unspeakable violence had occurred in relation to it, and yet it endured, fertile, a stratum of soil that perhaps made possible all future transplanted soils.

~ Mohsin Hamid

It may be that writers in my position,exiles, or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutilated into pillars of salt. But if we do look back, we must do in the knowledge - which gives rise to profound uncertainties- that our physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost, that we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind.

~ Salman Rushdie

He knew that he, Millat, was a Paki no matter where he came from; that he smelled of curry; had no sexual identity; took other people’s jobs; or had no job and bummed off the state; or gave all the jobs to his relatives; that he could be a dentist or a shop-owner or a curry-shifter, but not a footballer or a filmmaker; that he should go back to his own country; or stay here and earn his bloody keep; that he worshiped elephants and wore turbans; that no one who looked like Millat, or spoke like Millat, or felt like Millat, was ever on the news unless they had recently been murdered.

~ Zadie Smith

As it was, being a Zimbabwean immigrant was the worst thing a person could be in Southern Africa. They were the new Hebrews – homeless.

~ Thabo Katlholo

Most New Yorkers spent their lives somewhere between the fruit cart and the fifth floor. To see the city from a few hundred feet above the riffraff was pretty celestial. We gave the moment its due.

~ Amor Towles

These days, it feels to me like you make a devil's pact when you walk into this country. You hand over your passport at the check-in, you get stamped, you want to make a little money, get yourself started... but you mean to go back! Who would want to stay? Cold, wet, miserable; terrible food, dreadful newspapers - who would want to stay? In a place where you are never welcomed, only tolerated. Just tolerated. Like you are an animal finally house-trained.

~ Zadie Smith

This unhoused, exiled Satan was perhaps the heavenly patron of all exiles, all unhoused people, all those who were torn from their place and left floating, half-this, half-that, denied the rooted person's comforting, defining sense of having solid ground beneath their feet.

~ Salman Rushdie

Whenever people talk in the abstract about the pros and cons of immigration, one should not forget that immigrants are individual human beings whose lives happen not to fit neatly within national borders – and that like all human beings, they are all different.How different, though? Different better, or different worse? Such basic questions underlie whether people are willing to accept outsiders in their midst

~ Philippe Legrain

We wanted a labour force, but human beings came.

~ Terry Hayes

Mr. Speaker, our Nation depends on immigrants' labor, and I hope we can create an immigration system as dependable as they are.

~ Luis Gutierrez

We must fix our broken immigration system. That means stopping illegal immigration. And it means welcoming properly vetted legal immigrants, regardless of their race or religion. Just like we have for centuries.

~ Nikki Haley

Our nation is built upon a history of immigration, dating back to our first pioneers, the Pilgrims. For more than three centuries, we have welcomed generations of immigrants to our melting pot of hyphenated America: British-Americans; Italian-Americans; Irish-Americans; Jewish-Americans; Mexican-Americans; Chinese-Americans; Indian-Americans.

~ Ami Bera

They decided to let immigrants in and I am an immigrant. They gave us a chance to participate in this country's life and I took it.

~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

A lot of these liberal churches that harbor illegal immigrants who are criminals say they are following the example of Jesus. They are following the Jesus of their imagination rather than the Jesus of the Bible.

~ Robert Jeffress

We focus so much on how immigrants can change America that we forget that America has always changed immigrants even more.

~ Marco Rubio

We are a country where people of all backgrounds, all nations of origin, all languages, all religions, all races, can make a home. America was built by immigrants.

~ Hillary Clinton

Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.

~ Jean Rhys

I love immigrants. Legal, illegal - they're not to be despised.

~ Mario Cuomo

The factual reality is that the vast majority of immigrants - legal and illegal - contribute more to this country than they take out in social services.

~ Juan Williams

Therefore, if we are a Nation of laws and a Nation of immigrants, immigration should occur within a legal framework, not through the machinations of illegal schemes and scams that threaten our national security.

~ J. D. Hayworth

It is simply a fact that the birth rate of our illegal immigrants exceeds that of our legal residents.

~ John Linder

If we want to set and enforce a limit on immigration, we have to be willing to say no to would-be immigrants who look a lot like our own ancestors, not because there's anything wrong with them, but simply because admitting them would exceed our legal limit.

~ Jan C. Ting

There are a lot of Latinos who believe that allowing illegal immigrants to cut in front of the line ahead of those pursuing the legal path sends the wrong signal. The GOP needs to articulate that message respectfully but boldly.

~ Angela Mcglowan

Donald Trump is a champion for legal immigrants.

~ Michael D. Cohen