Quotes & Sayings About Immigration To 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

There are racial considerations too grave to be brushed aside for any sentimental reasons. Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome shows deterioration on both sides. Quality of mind and body suggests that observance of ethnic law is as great a necessity to a nation
as immigration law. — Calvin Coolidge

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

When Europeans arrived on this continent, they blew it with the Native Americans. They plowed over them, taking as much as they could of their land and valuables, and respecting almost nothing about the native cultures. They lost the wisdom of the indigenous peoples-wisdom about the land and connectedness to the great web of life ... We have another chance with all these refugees. People come here penniless but not cultureless. They bring us gifts. We can synthesize the best of our traditions with the best of theirs. We can teach and learn from each other to produce a better America ... — Mary Pipher

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

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 at home but also to reach to the depths of our souls. The day arrives when the guilty must return to save those who could not find the courage to leave. — Orhan Pamuk

But I don't call it immigration, I call it migration. As a species it's very healthy for us to get up and move around the planet. Sometimes certain groups of people have to do that for economic reasons. Nobody's doing it just to be spiteful. Everybody loves the idea of a homeland. I used to, but I've kind of got the bigger picture now. It's a home planet to me. — John Lydon

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

The 1924 Immigration Restriction Act was the primary tool used by FDR to keep Jewish refugees from reaching US shores. — A.E. Samaan

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

My mother did not want to go to America: this much I knew. I knew it by the way she became distracted and impatient with my sister, by the way she stopped tucking us into bed at night. I knew it from watching her feet, which began to shuffle after my father announced the move, as though they threw down invisible roots that needed to be pulled out with each step. — Catherine Chung

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. — Randy Quarles

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

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

We know that the abilities of European Union member states are not infinite. As such, it makes little sense for us to criticize each other.All of us accepted Sweden's decision to introduce border controls too. And that is a country that was for decades the most open to immigration. — Wolfgang Schauble

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

When we think about immigration, we have to understand there are folks all around the world who still see America as the land of promise. And they provide us energy, and they provide us innovation. And they start companies like Intel and Google, and we want to encourage that. — Barack Obama

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

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

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

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 are human. — Christopher Hitchens

Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of that problem. It has to be addressed. — David R. Brower

THE WORLD IS increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn't very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more? How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind. To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business. — Matt Haig

The question we Americans need to address, before it is answered for us, is: Does this First World nation wish to become a Third World country? Because that is our destiny if we do not build a sea wall against the waves of immigration rolling over our shores ... Who speaks for the Euro-Americans, who founded the USA? ... Is it not time to take back America? — Pat Buchanan

There are many domestic issues that give us a lot of common ground to work on. Health, education and immigration are among the areas where we share mutual goals and aspirations. There are also many values that we share as a communities. — Bob Menendez

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

The problem with much of the debate over this issue is that we confuse two separate matters: immigration policy (how many people we admit) and immigrant policy (how we treat people who are already here). What our nation needs is a pro-immigrant policy of low immigration. A pro-immigrant policy of low immigration can reconcile America's traditional welcome for newcomers with the troubling consequences of today's mass immigration. It would enable us to be faithful and wise stewards of America's interests while also showing immigrants the respect they deserve as future Americans. — Tom Tancredo

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

Krys Lee has written a book of unforgettable stories, each one building on the other to create a complex, moving portrait of contemporary Korea and its diaspora. She guides us surely through the fallout of war, immigration, and financial crisis, always alert to the possibility of tenderness, transcendence, and even humor along the way. Lee is a writer who really understands loneliness, but her voice is so appealing, and her perceptions so wise, that we feel all the less lonely for knowing her characters and experiencing their lives. — Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

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

If America is the land of opportunity, a country where perseverance and hard work is rewarded by recognition, then an illegal harbors the opposite ambitions. His greatest reward us anonymity, invisibility. Aided and abetted by market forces and the laws of supply and demand, he hones his skill to stand up but make sure he's never counted. — Bella Pollen

Unless US citizens acknowledge and understand their country's imperial past, they will not be able to understand its present or future. Much of the recent and current Hispanic resettlement of parts of the United States is a consequence of empire ... Countercolonization follows colonization, and the waves of migrants always flow back like returning tides. — Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

With all of the talk about polling and demographics, I think too many people have lost touch with the human and moral crisis of deportations. Every day, roughly 1,000 people are deported because the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives is denying the majority of the US Congress a chance to vote on citizenship. I will be arrested today because the labor movement stands with the families tragically ripped apart by John Boehner and the House Republicans' embrace of a broken immigration system. — Arlene Holt Baker

The immigration issue is, I recognize, one that generates a lot of passion, but it does not make sense for us to want to push talent out. — Barack Obama

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

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

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

I think that America is such an incredibly dynamic place because of immigration. We fundamentally have been a culture that's been put together from the explosions of other cultures. But it's hard for us to see. We have blinded ourselves to the reality of what our country is. — Junot Diaz

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

I think what's important for us to understand and there is a way forward on this issue that we an bring our country together on. And while I'm president I will do it. And it will begin by bringing illegal immigration under control and proving to the American people. — Marco Rubio

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

It's striking how so many immigration activists don't seem to particularly like this country. They tell us that America is a teeming mass of racist, sexist, homophobic bigots. But then they insist on bringing the rest of the world to live here. — Ann Coulter

I introduced bill saying we need more security, we need more scrutiny. Once again, Marco [Rubio] opposed this. So Marco can't have it both ways. He thinks he wants to be this, "Oh, I'm great and strong on national defense." But he's the weakest of all the candidates on immigration. He is the one for an open border that is leaving us defenseless. — Ted Cruz

If we are to believe that our immigration laws simply have no value, as our current policies would have us believe, should we then simply throw them all out, the entire lot of immigration law? I hope not. — John Linder

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