The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here.

Alexa and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the...

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...

{…]I began to feel tears of frustration build up in my eyes, yearning to free themselves from their glandular prisons.

…the Statue of Liberty’s got this invitation: ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your reeking homeless–”Huddled masses,’ said Ira. ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’…Okay, fine. So like...

God’s love for others does not stop at the border; neither should ours.

Why are you perpetuating a childhood you grew up despising? Pg 57

foreigners” from across state borders, and the decision whom to exclude or include, and under what conditions, rests not with a multitude of independent private property owners or neighborhoods of owners but with a single...

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....

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...

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

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.

Confession is good for the soul even after the soul has been claimed” (p. 381).

In the white marble hall of the hotel, I’m waltzing with Rajat. The music is a river and we’re dancing in it. It winds against our bodies, muscular as a serpent.

In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system,non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor,judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush’sorder calls this Soviet-style abomination ‘a...

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...

[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...

Thank God for immigrants. They’re the only ones who have any personality left. They still allow themselves emotions, judgments, and all those qualities that we are “evolving” past. I don’t know what they’re saying, but...

They were both lost in cities that would not pause even to shrug

It feels as though it were just yesterday Grandfather exited my life like a bullet, leaving a bleeding hole behind.

We wanted a labour force, but human beings came.

Raging crime, class warfare, invasive immigrants, light morals, public misbehavior. Always we convince ourselves that the parade of unwelcome and despised is a new phenomenon, which is why the phrase “the good old days” has...

Most of the time it’s not the Europeans who belittle us. What happens when we look at them is that we belittle ourselves. When we undertake the pilgrimage, it’s not just to escape the tyranny...

When did the skin on our bodies, the difference in our voice, or the direction our heart takes us decide whether or not we should have human rights?

The country was a dreamland; and perhaps it even reminded my wife’s grandfather of the night he woke up drunk in his friend’s house, beside his friend’s wife, everything similar but new, different, better. The...

Butterflies have always had wings; people have always had legs. While history is marked by the hybridity of human societies & the desire for movement, the reality of most of migration today reveals the unequal...

As she continues to answer questions about her employment, all these words mean little more to her now than I AM SOPHISTICATED, I AM WORTHY, I AM SOPHISTICATED, I AM WORTHY. She attempts the posture...

One who criticises capitalism while approving of immigration, of which the working class is its first victim, would do better to remain silent. One who criticises immigration while remaining silent regarding capitalism should do the...

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...

Don’t rely on others to speak for you. It would be a miracle that anything got done in the world.

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

Your life depends on a random stranger who could kill you, will probably disrespect you, and will most likely pay you much less than you deserve. But even those prospects are better than the ones...

He wasn’t sure he liked everything that was happening, but a lot of it was “cultural,” apparently, and you couldn’t object to that, so he didn’t. “Cultural” sort of solved problems by explaining that they...

Without comprehension, the immigrant would forever remain shut — a stranger in America. Until America can release the heart as well as train the hand of the immigrant, he would forever remain driven back upon...

Getting my legal situation fixed takes a bit longer than we all thought: twelve years to be exact. Not a big deal. Only most of my life.

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

In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone...

Immigration, as it exists today, is a broken system. It traps anyone who’s in the system.

Lady and gentleman, when my parents left Korea with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the considerable wealth they had amassed in the shipping business, they had a dream. They had a dream...

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...

And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see...

The land flourished because it was fed from so many sources–because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples.

Är det egentligen något fel i att vilja ha folk som gör rätt för sig som invandrare?Kanske inte, men var i så fall vaksam på vilken människosyn vi anammar när människor för att komma över...

It will be an interesting way to have a discussion about immigration.

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.

Sverige har inte haft krig på egen mark sedan sextonhundratalet och hur ofta tänkte jag inte den tanken att någon borde invadera Sverige, bomba husen, plundra hela landet, skjuta männen, våldta kvinnorna, och sedan låta...

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...

Yo no soy mexicano. Yo no soy gringo. Yo no soy chicano. No soy gringo en USA y mexicano en Mexico. Soy chicano en todas partes. No tengo que asimilarme a nada. Tengo mi propia...

Slowly, even though I thought it would never happen, New York lost its charm for me. I remember arriving in the city for the first time, passing with my parents through the First World’s Club...

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