Emmanuel Jal Quotes

During my childhood in Cyprus, the British talked about the Cypriots as if the Cypriots were outsiders in their own country. And even though I was born in Cyprus, my parents were American, and so I was an outsider in the land of my birth.

My parents - they tried to become American, they tried to become British, they tried to become Scandinavian - nobody wanted them, anywhere.

President Donald Trump seems to have made me an alien.

I'll always be a foreigner.

America feels like home as much as it does here. Although it's a strange situation as I feel almost like I'm in no-man's land some of the time, because although I'm a resident, I still can't vote so I don't really have a say in what goes on where I live.

I'm obviously an American citizen. My parents are American citizens. But I'm not looked at as an American.

I was born here. My children were born here. What the hell do I have to do to be called an American?

Some people wanted me deported - as if you can be deported to Puerto Rico.

I have always found it jarring to encounter people born and raised in, say, Switzerland, who are denied its citizenship and still considered Algerians or Turks.

I was really upset because I was branded as an enemy alien when I'm an American.

I am a permanent legal resident of this country, I was born in Korea; my parents came to America for a better life for our family, I've lived here nearly my whole life, and even though I consider myself through and through Korean and American, I guess when it comes down to it, anyone can take away my identity. It doesn't belong to me.

This is the positive way of seeing the modern Jewish dilemma: I am from everywhere. The negative way is no matter where you go, you find out that you're a victim, that you're unwanted and don't belong.

We own the country we grow up in, or we are aliens and invaders.

Remember that when you say "I will have non of this exile and this stranger for his face is not like my face and his speech is strange," you have denied America with that word.

Jews have had to carry around their own sense of self in a carpet bag and I think perhaps too much emphasis might be being put on nationality and on the other hand patriotism, that sort of thing.

It's a complicated issue, but I define myself as an American, primarily.

Maybe I am not French, maybe I am from nowhere.

To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.

I handed my passport to the immigration officer, and he looked at it and looked at me and said, 'What are you?'

The recent riots in France demonstrate the problem European countries face where second and third generation immigrants still do not consider themselves French, German, or English.

Is it unreasonable to have proof of citizenship when entering another country?

I was born in the USA, which many people still find hard to believe.

I became an American citizen three years ago, and if I'd been arrested, maybe that wouldn't have happened. That was a very proud moment, by the way. I still have my Irish passport, but becoming an American citizen was important in terms of my family.

I can't live for more than four years outside of Canada. I'm Canadian, so ultimately that is my reference point.

I know I'm British. I haven't spent much time in the U.K., but my parents are British, my family heritage is British, so if I wasn't British, what would I be? I am British.