Immigration Quotes

I believe Western culture -- rule of law, universal suffrage, etc. -- is preferable to Arab culture: that's why there are millions of Muslims in Scandinavia, and four Scandinavians in Syria. Follow the traffic. I support immigration, but with assimilation.

~ Mark Steyn

The other dangerous delusion from which those who are wilfully or otherwise blind to realities suffer, is summed up in the word integration. To be integrated into a population means to become for all practical purposes indistinguishable from its other members.Now, at all times, where there are marked physical differences, especially of colour, integration is difficult though, over a period, not impossible. There are among the Commonwealth immigrants who have come to live here in the last fifteen years or so, many thousands whose wish and purpose is to be integrated and whose every thought and endeavour is bent in that direction.But to imagine that such a thing enters the heads of a great and growing majority of immigrants and their descendants is a ludicrous misconception, and a dangerous one.

~ Enoch Powell

Not only was it impossible to truly belong in America, but he didn't fit in here anymore either. He was a dweller of two lands, accepted by none.

~ Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Foreign behavior? What the fuck are you talking about? Foreign behavior? Have you read Things Fall Apart? Ifemulu asked, wishing she had not told Ranyinudo about Dike. She was angrier with Ranyinudo than she had ever been, yet she knew that Ranyinudo meant well, and had said what many other Nigerians would say, which was why she had not told anyone else about Dike's suicide attempt since she came back.

~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

...and it strikes her, as she walks, that borders, like hatred, are exaggerated precisely because otherwise they would cease to exist altogether. 

~ Colum Mccann

Trump didn't divide America. He just doused us with gasoline and fanned the flames.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Building bridges takes us further than building walls.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Our fights must be rooted in experiences, in stories, and in anecdotes. People remember these more than sterile numbers or facts. Myths are powerful magic and can turn enemies into friends. In a world where too many still tell stories that some are illegal and that to be free we must control the movement of others, the work of making new myths is essential.

~ Syed Khalid Hussan

As many Chinas as there were, there were that many Charleses as well. Every immigrant is the person he might have been and the person he is, and his homeland is at once the place it would have been to him from the inside and the place it must be to him from the outside.

~ Jade Chang

But he was no longer in Tollygunge. He had stepped out of it as he had stepped so many mornings out of his dreams, its reality and its particular logic rendered meaningless in the light of day. The difference was so extreme that he could not accommodate the two places together in his mind. In this enormous new country, there seemed to be nowhere for the old to reside. There was nothing to link them; he was the sole link. Here life ceased to obstruct or assault him. Here was a place where humanity was not always pushing, rushing, running as if with a fire at its back

~ Jhumpa Lahiri

Like other discriminatory legislation in our country's history, immigration laws define and differentiate legal status on the basis of arbitrary attributes. Immigration laws create unequal rights. People who break immigration laws don't cause harm or even potential harm (unlike, for example, drunk driving, which creates the potential for harm even if no accident occurs). Rather, people who break immigration laws do things that are perfectly legal for others, but denied to them--like crossing a border or, even more commonly, simply exist.

~ Aviva Chomsky

If our goal is to slow migration, then the best way to do so is to work for a more equitable global system. But slowing migration is an odd goal, if the real problem is global inequality.

~ Aviva Chomsky

Lincoln bought a German language newspaper.

~ Harold Holzer

No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.

~ Warsan Shire

We call it ‘back home’knowing full well that the majority of us may never go back. That we may spend but a handful of weeks in the tropic heat and relentless traffic,tolerating family members we may have convincedourselves to have missed, but very few will submit to that final pull to return. We know our land, our soil as back home, but for many of usit is only the home we left back,the one we left so far behind to be thrust into a lifelong searchof another, of another, of another.

~ Naveed Khan

Maybe I live in the gates that lead to outbound international flights. Maybe that is home.And do I feel more comfortable at the departures or at the arrivals?

~ Michal Coret

I didn't want to be an immigrant. I was forced to be an immigrant. Alexis de Tocqueville, the French writer, said that the powerful and the happy never go into exile. He was right.

~ Jorge Ramos

I’ll tell you what I don’t believe, Alwyn. I don’t believe there’s a pretty forest in the sky with castles and a white light and God and all his angels waiting to welcome all the good people in. And you and me standing there sick with nerves while they check us out to see if we’ve made the grade. That sounds too much like immigrating to Australia.

~ Beverly Rycroft

When John Quincy Adams in the Netherlands was placed with elementary students and belittled because he did not speak Dutch, either the author or John Adams accuses school authorities of littleness of soul.

~ Paul C. Nagel

I believe that the victims and their families should start lodging civil actions for negligence against the politicians. Allowing treasonous murderers into our countries, at the tragic cost to our citizens is worthy of a court action. And as soon as the first judgment goes in favour of the plaintiff, that will change the immigration policies overnight, because, as we know, money is the only thing that talks.

~ Robert Black

God's love for others does not stop at the border, neither should ours.

~ Dillon Burroughs

People who are driven by love will overcome hardships and hurdles in ways that people who are only driven by profit never can.

~ Simon S. Tam

My family came to this country to take advantage of opportunity, not to take advantage of America.

~ Jake Danishevsky

I've come to think that there's an age beyond which it is impossible to lift a child from the pervading marinade of an original country, pat them down with a paper napkin and then deep-fry them in another country, another language like hot oil scalding the first language away.

~ Helen Oyeyemi

The happy and powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune.

~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Dat's what they say of this cauntry back home, Kath: 'America, the land of milk and honey.' Bot they never tell you the milk's gone sour and the honey's stolen.

~ Andre Dubus Iii

America is big enough to accommodate all their dreams.

~ Barack Obama

The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations And Religions; whom we shall wellcome to a participation of all our rights and previleges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.

~ George Washington

A nation ringed by walls will only imprison itself.

~ Barack Obama

The ground was scorched, the streets teemed with refugees, and these Americans were playing at fleeing! As if they had something to resent, to despise, to scorn, to run away from! As if they weren't the lords of the earth.

~ Cynthia Ozick

They play, said the old man. Every week the anglos play a game to celebrate who they are. He stopped, raised his cane and fanned the air. One of them whacks it, then sets off like it was a trip around the world, to every one of the bases out there, you know the anglos have bases all over the world, right? Well the one who whacked it runs from one to the next while the others keep taking swings to distract their enemies, and if he doesn't get caught he makes it home and his people welcome him with open arms and cheering.

~ Yuri Herrera

I smiled at him. America, I said quietly, just like that. What is it? The sweepings of every country including our own. Isn't that true? That's a fact.

~ James Joyce

[America]'s higher education system is excellent, both in terms of quality and accessibility. Here anybody can go to college. Many countries simply can't accommodate many students. And by the way, most people who came here in the seventies came to get an education. They didn't wake up one morning and say, 'I'm going to America to be free.' they said, 'I'll go there to get an education.' That's an important distinction. It was only after they were here for a while that they fully appreciated the freedoms we enjoy here.

~ Mahbod Seraji

America is so rich and fat, because it has eaten the tragedy of millions of immigrants.

~ Michael Gold

And I thought, y’know, I mean…this is crazy. I mean, the only thing that determines what country you belong to is where you happened to be born? What is a country, anyway? It’s not, y’know, “purple mountain’s majesty” or “fruited plains,” whatever the hell that means. I mean, America isn’t a place, it’s an ideal. It could happen in the Sahara Desert and still be America. For that matter, I’m the child of immigrants. My father’s lived and worked in this country for the past three decades. And he’s somehow more or less American than some redneck who uses Osama bin Laden for toilet paper? How the hell do you measure something like that?

~ Phillip Andrew Bennett Low

Maybe that's what living in America does to you: it spreads you into far distances until you're just little bits rolling apart.

~ Marina Budhos

Our country, our people, and our laws have to be our top priority.

~ Donald J. Trump

I want good people to come here from all over the world, but I want them to do so legally. We can expedite the process, we can reward achievement and excellemce, but we have to respect the legal process. And those people who take advantage of the system and come here illegally should never enjoy the benefits of being a resident--or citizen--of this nation. So I am against any path to citizenship for undocumented workers or anyone else who is in this country illegaly. They should--and need to--go home and get in line.

~ Donald J. Trump

If you have laws that you don't enforce, then you don't have laws. This leads to lawlessness.

~ Donald J. Trump

I want good people to come here from all over the world, but I want them to do so legally. We can expedite the process, we can reward achievement and excellence, but we have to respect the legal process. And those people who take advantage of the system and come here illegally should never enjoy the benefits of being a resident--or citizen--of this nation. So I am against any path to citizenship for undocumented workers or anyone else who is in this country illegaly. They should--and need to--go home and get in line.

~ Donald J. Trump