Immigrant Quotes

We cannot shun our values as an immigrant nation. This is a wrong path. And while possibly it is a short-term political victory based on division and based on creating a wedge issue that splits people in this country, it is a long-term defeat for this Nation.

Somewhere between 50 to 60 percent of the food you eat has been touched by immigrant hands, and it is fair to say some of them are not here as they should be here. But if you didn't have these folks, you would be spending a lot more - three, four or five times more - for food, or we would have to import food and have all the food security risks.

An estimated 7 million illegal immigrants were residing in the United States in January 2000. This is double the size of the illegal immigrant population in January 1990 and constitutes 2.5 percent of the total U.S. population of just over 281 million.

It's a project that touched me as an immigrant and as a New Yorker.

I think it's an enormous blessing to be the child of an immigrant who fled oppression, because you realize how fragile liberty is and how easily it can be taken away.

I took Laura on a trip once where we followed the Immigrant Trail for about six hundred miles. She really learned a lesson. People forget too often how it was back then.

In becoming an American, from Europe, what one has in common with that other immigrant is contempt for me-it's nothing else but color.

The anger that Uncle Junior has comes from my background. My father was the son of an Italian immigrant, and I've seen the fire of the Italian temperament. It can be explosive sometimes in ways that are both funny and tragic.

In Psalm 72, Solomon prays for power and fame but he says the purpose of influence is to speak up for others and one is the immigrant. He doesn't delineate between legal and illegal.

Thus, biologically speaking the American people are literally only half an immigrant people.

And you have to remember that I came to America as an immigrant. You know, on a ship, through the Statue of Liberty. And I saw that skyline, not just as a representation of steel and concrete and glass, but as really the substance of the American Dream.

Really, the values under which my generation was raised in the '50s were immigrant values even though we weren't immigrants. The greatest thing you could be was a college-educated Negro.

I'm very inspired by him-it was my father who taught us that an immigrant must work twice as hard as anybody else, that he must never give up.

I don't want to scream 'Immigrant Song' every night for the rest of my life, and I'm not sure I could.

Every unskilled illegal immigrant who enters the United States for work drives up healthcare costs for every American. And, every illegal immigrant we turn a blind eye toward weakens the rule of law our country is founded on.

I identify with Superman. I am adopted, I am an only child, and I love the idea that he comes from another world, that he's the ultimate immigrant. He has all these extraordinary powers, and he has a righteousness about him.

Second-generation Hispanics marry non-Hispanics at a higher rate than second-generation Irish or Italians. Second-generation Hispanics' English language capability rates are higher than previous immigrant groups'.

We should be the natural home for the millions of Britons of immigrant origin. But we're not. Because too often we've sounded like people who wish they hadn't come here at all.

I have an immigrant story. Most people come here for economic reasons, or religious reasons, or racial reasons, or gender reasons, or one of those things. I had a good job in Paris, but America was, and still is, the golden fleece. And I've done very well!

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.

I'm an immigrant myself. It was a tough road to come to America and work.

Mum used to hide love letters from my boyfriends and put me down. Now I understand that she was a Polish immigrant forced to settle in Chicago. She was jealous of the freedom life gave me.

No country in Europe has a larger proportion of men and women of immigrant descent, mainly from the African continent and mainly Muslim: an estimated six to seven million of them, or more than 10% of the population.

People want a result. Immigrant voters aren't stupid, and they're going to know who's on their side.

To the European immigrant - that is, to the aliens who have been converted into Americans by the advantages of American life - the Promise of America has consisted largely in the opportunity which it offered of economic independence and prosperity.

America was and is the immigrant's dream.

Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.

In Washington State, the immigrant population has grown by 42 percent in the five years between 2000 and 2005 - which is an increase from 8 percent to 10.6 percent of the overall population - and the jobless rate in the state has hit a 6 year low.

The city has become a serious menace to our civilization... It has a peculiar attraction for the immigrant.

My father was an immigrant who literally walked across Europe to get out of Russia. He fought in World War I. He was wounded in action. My father was a great success even though he never had money. He was a very determined man, a great role model.