Quotes & Sayings About Immigration In The Us

I believe we're at the verge of the greatest time to be alive in this world.But Washington is holding us back. How we tax, how we regulate. We're not embracing the energy revolution in our midst, a broken immigration system that has been politicized rather than turning it into an economic driver.We're not protecting and preserving our entitlement system or reforming for the next generation. All these things languish while we have politicians in Washington using these as wedge issues. — Jeb Bush

I think most of us in America want our security. There're so many people out there that are fearful and now with this realization of immigration, with the terrorists, we need to have better checks and balances in regards to who's emigrating into our country. — Jan Brewer

By keeping labor supply down, immigration policy tends to keep wages high. Let us underline this basic principle: Limitation of the supply of any grade of labor relative to all other productive factors can be expected to raise its wage rate; and increase in supply will, other things being equal, tend to depress wage rates. — Paul Samuelson

The 1790 Naturalization law determined that "free white persons" could naturalize after two years of residency, and established that the children of citizens would also be citizens. Soon after, in 1795, Congress extended the residency period to five years, and in 1798 extended the residency requirement even further, to fourteen years. — Pratheepan Gulasekaram

We have to ensure that our immigration system works in the interests of Britain, enabling us to make a realistic promise to our young school-leavers. It is part of our contract with the British people. — Iain Duncan Smith

If I were an immigrant Latino not born in the US, I could not have written Searching for Whitopia: An Improbably Journey to the Heart of America book. And that is because many of the Whitopians would not have been comfortable talking about their views on immigration, talking about their views on taxes. And they wouldn't have spilled to me the new script on race and poverty as they did. — Richard Benjamin

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 else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American ... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag ... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people. — Theodore Roosevelt

You cannot grant amnesty. If the American people see us granting amnesty they will never again believe in legal immigration. They will never again support it, and that's wrong for our country, bad for our future. — Marco Rubio

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 convinced
ourselves 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 us
it is only the home we left back,
the one we left so far behind
to be thrust into a lifelong search
of another, of another, of another. — Naveed Khan

It is a commonplace that every age, or almost every age, thinks that its own time is one of special difficulty. The barbarians seem always to be at the gate. Alas, in our present day this is rather too literally so. But what many fail to realise is that the barbarians are a more various and numerous group than just those unspeakable villains who behead hostages in the desert. Barbarians might also wear ties and travel business class, they might occupy seats of power in government. They might be us, ourselves, when we give up certain civil liberties and betray our own values in the spurious belief that this will protect us from terrorism, organised crime, unwelcome immigration. Forms of dismantling civilisation might differ, but the result is the same. — A.C. Grayling

So here's the drill. Every morning you'll come here to the Bank to check in with the Etceteras."

"Wait, what?"

"Etceteras. ETC stands for Ether Traffic Controllers, and the nickname just evolved from there."

"What does that make us, then?"

"Well, technically," said Uncle Mort, "we're called Gamma Removal and Immigration Managers - "

"But are more commonly known as Grims," Driggs said.

"Can't say I approve of the term." Uncle Mort flourished his razor-sharp scythe and smiled. "We're not that grim, are we?"

Lex snickered. — Gina Damico

States were barred from financing their immigration systems with specific taxes on immigrants and transportation companies, leaving the continued existence of these state institutions to the general state fisc or the generosity of private charitable organizations interested in immigrant welfare and integration. The resource strain on states and charitable organizations placed enormous pressure on Congress to enact federal law. — Pratheepan Gulasekaram

Unless the Stream of their Importation could be turned ... they will soon so outnumber us, that all the advantages we have, will not in my Opinion be able to preserve our Language, and even our Government will become precarious. — Benjamin Franklin

In terms of immigration, we're seeing a lot of Democrats and Republicans use the really elastic term, 'Comprehensive Immigration Reform,' and they don't totally understand what that means. For us in El Paso, it's part of a larger discussion about the nature of the border. — Beto O'Rourke

In reply to claims that the old laws were discriminatory, but the new law would not be, he elaborated: I do not think you could draft an immigration bill in which you do not discriminate. I think discrimination is ordinarily the exercise of intelligence to make conscious choices. . . . we always discriminate, only the basis of it is different, each of us think[s] our own way is wise and right. . . . I think there is a rational basis and a reasonable basis to give a preference to Holland over Afghanistan For — Vox Day

My favorite scene was my dying scene, when I had to stand up and suddenly in that moment recall my wife and everything I stood for, and I say "My queen, my wife, my love" and I think of all my movies, that is the most powerful moment I ever had. In preparation for each take, I would scream at the ground, clench my fists, and scrape the ground, and cut all my knuckles and rip my nails... I would scream, and scrape, and scratch, and then I would stand and go "GO."
And they would film.
And it felt so visceral, and so powerful, and the next day, that was my last day of filming, the next day I was leaving Montreal and I went through US IMMIGRATION and the officer asked "what happened to your hands" and I said "I was just scratching the ground" and she took me for secondary questioning, and I missed my flight, and had to stay another day.
So the next day I wore gloves. — Gerard Butler

Displacement results in a tenuous relationship with the past, with the self that used to exist and operate in a different place, where the qualities that constituted us were in no need of negotiation. Immigration is an ontological crisis because you are forced to negotiatet the conditions of your selfhood under pereptually changing existential circumstances. — Aleksandar Hemon

I have a recurring daymare that when the Glorious People's SWAT Teams smash their way in, most of us by which I mean members of the general freedom movement will be caught flatfooted, sitting in our underwear behind our computer monitors, guzzling Jolt and gorging on Cheetos, while arguing with our friends and enemies online about immigration or abortion, two of the issues that the Lefties know they can always rely on to keep that general freedom movement divided and powerless. — L. Neil Smith

I was interested in immigration and I wanted to use that in the film, not necessarily to talk about immigrants, although I wanted to do that, but to talk about ourselves through the eyes of an immigrant. The film takes place in the school and it tells us a little bit about who we are and where we're at, but through the eyes of someone who has a different background. — Philippe Falardeau

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

Secure our borders first. Let us know and let us make sure the American people know that we're taking care of the important business of dealing with the illegal immigration into this country. You cannot begin to address the concerns of the people who are already here unless and until you have made certain that no more are coming in behind them. — Michael Steele

Liberals had tried convincing Americans to vote for them, but that kept ending badly. Except for Lyndon Johnson's aberrational 1964 landslide, Democrats have not been able to get a majority of white people to vote for them in any presidential election since 1948.13 Their only hope was to bring in new voters. Okay, fine. You won't vote for us, America? We tried this the easy way, but you give us no choice. We're going to overwhelm you with new voters from the Third World. As Democratic consultant Patrick Reddy wrote for the Roper Center in 1998: "The 1965 Immigration Reform Act promoted by President Kennedy, drafted by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and pushed through the Senate by Ted Kennedy has resulted in a wave of immigration from the Third World that should shift the nation in a more liberal direction within a generation. It will go down as the Kennedy family's greatest gift to the Democratic Party."14 — Ann Coulter

There is no immigration policy in the US that is permitting what's happening. What's happening here is happening outside the law, that our leaders do not wish to enforce or acknowledge. And the same thing happened in the UK. — Rush Limbaugh

As Dr. King said, an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. It is that creed of the civil rights movement that still motivates us today ... So today, we take up the cause of joining arms with our immigrant brothers and sisters in that spirit ... to lend a hand to those who confront injustice as a result of a broken immigration system. — Steven Horsford

We allow for complexity, and therefore make accommodations for disagreement and its patient resolution, in most of the big areas of life: international trade, immigration, oncology . . . But when it comes to domestic existence, we tend to make a fateful presumption of ease, which in turn inspires in us a tense aversion to protracted negotiation. We would think it peculiar indeed to devote a two-day — Alain De Botton

We are people of worship and work in service to God and to each other. It's that simple. It's that hard. While many run from Islam, or from poverty, immigration, AIDS, third-world debt relief, the church runs toward them all. It is a dangerous mission. But it is the mission to which God has called us. In our baptism, he calls us to a life of search and rescue. Each time we gather, we do so with the full knowledge that we are being sent. Sent to usher in the shalom of God, to bring shalom to every person, space, and place. The first step in not killing your Muslim neighbor is to join a church that reads the gospels (particularly Luke 10) and puts those words into action. We're moving beyond stereotypes. The future depends upon it. Beyond fear. Beyond anger. Beyond rage. Beyond caricatures. So be bold. And do not be afraid. — Joshua Graves

Maybe next year the government might impose some immigration rules on the academy. Two Mexicans in a row is suspicious. [On Mexican immigrants in the US] I hope they can be treated with respect of the ones who came before and built this incredible immigrant nation. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

In January 1924, as a sweeping immigration measure awaited presidential signature, American Jewish Committee leader Louis Marshall asked to meet with President Calvin Coolidge to urge a veto. Coolidge refused to see him. The president's views were summed up in an article he had written a few years earlier in Good Housekeeping magazine, titled "Whose Country Is This?" "[B]iological laws show us that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races," Coolidge wrote. — J.J. Goldberg

As history shows us, when colonization is voluntary, people will self-select better than any testing system. It's like those foolish attempts to control immigration to American based on the traits that were deemed desirable, when in fact the only trait that defines Americans historically is "descended from somebody willing to give up everything to live there."
Willingness is the single most important test. — Orson Scott Card

The Germans themselves I should regard as aboriginal, and not mixed at all with other races through immigration or intercourse. For in former times, it was not by land but on shipboard that those who sought to emigrate would arrive; and the boundless and, so to speak, hostile ocean beyond us,is seldom entered by a sail from our world. — Tacitus

She had sculpted the mist, the way those who have no choice do. She had willed a life for the two of us in a new land. — Padma Lakshmi

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

NumbersUSA's work was critical to derailing the 2007 comprehensive federal immigration bill, which had, at that point, received the support of President Buch, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the high-tech industry, the Catholic Church, immigrant-advocacy organizations, and several industries reliant on immigration labor, including farming, food services, and construction. During the weeks leading up to the floor vote on the bill, NumbersUSA coordinated weekly phone calls with the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, mobilized its members to engage key senators, and provided those senators with information and arguments necessary to oppose the bill. Several actors, including pro-immigrant advocates, restrictionists, and members of Congress, have credited NumbersUSA with causing the collapse of the bill in the Senate. — Pratheepan Gulasekaram