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

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.

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

The question of the stranger in a society which estranges everybody from it–while forcing everybody to assimilate their own alienation–takes cover under dubious and sinister masks.

Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me.

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

it was Greenspan who through some excessive deregulation prepared the monetary ground for the rise of the subprime mortgage companies: a lending market that specialises in high-risk mortgages and loans.’Innovation’, said Greenspan in April 2005,...

A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.

AMNESTY, n. The state’s magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.

As we all came to discover the limitations of assimilation, we grew closer as a family

What, indeed, is a New Yorker? Is he Jew or Irish? Is he English or German? Is he Russian or Polish? He may be something of all these, and yet he is wholly none of...

Not again, Draper,” Frank sighed. “You’re not going to stop us from crossing. You and I know that the one thing the Government does even more poorly than provide healthcare is secure its borders.

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...

People are talking about immigration, emigration and the rest of the fucking thing. It’s all fucking crap. We’re all human beings, we’re all mammals, we’re all rocks, plants, rivers. Fucking borders are just such a...

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...

Once again she would arrive at a foreign place. Once again be the newcomer, an outsider, the one who did not belong. She knew from experience that she would quickly have to ingratiate herself with...

Nihil humanum a me alienum puto, said the Roman poet Terence: ‘Nothing human is alien to me.’ The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens...

Its magnificence was indescribable, and its magnitude was inconceivable. She felt overwhelmed in the presence of its greatness. Pg 87

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.