immigrant perspective Quotes

I have nothing to do with racism in America; it was here when I got here.

As an immigrant, I appreciate, far more than the average American, the liberties we have in this country. Silence is a big enemy of morality. I don't want our blunders in history to get repeated.

[Everybody Loves Somebody] was a different take on that immigrant sort of life.

As an immigrant, I chose to live in America because it is one of the freest and most vibrant nations in the world. And as an immigrant, I feel an obligation to speak up for immigration policies that will keep America the most economically robust, creative and freedom-loving nation in the world.

I remember when I first came to America and I saw posters for TV shows and I was like, "What?! Why does a television show deserve space on a billboard?"

I love Europe, but we are still struggling with that kind of development. First of all, we don't have a smart conversation about the difference between an immigrant and a refugee. A refugee can't go back. An immigrant is someone - I chose to move to America. And I also have the option of saying hey, didn't work out, I can move back. That's a completely different story than someone who is locked in.

It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city for only the very young.

We immigrants can sometimes sound a little hysterical about this because we come from places that have tried this and we know where it leads. Anybody who's lived in countries with socialized health care knows that it becomes the dominant political issue.

As the grandson of Italian immigrants, maybe I am biased, but I think Christopher Columbus, the man who is rightfully credited with bringing European civilization to the Western Hemisphere, deserves the national holiday enacted by Congress in 1934.

I came to the U.S. to have opportunities. I saw a lot of people in gangs. I just didn't understand that - you live in the U.S., you have all these opportunities. And then you get in a gang?

My film is actually very critical of the level of French we're using back home. To have an immigrant from an ancient French colony come and do that is a little critical of our education system back home. Balzac is definitely over their heads. It's meant to be funny also because it would be also probably too much for kids in France, but kids in France would know who Balzac is. But, back home at that age, I guarantee you they don't know who he is.

My parents regarded school teachers as higher beings, as did many immigrants.

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.

All you crazy white people "I'm American!", all you did was come out of your mother's pussy on American soil. That's it. That's it! What, you think you're better than somebody from France 'cause you came out of a pussy in Detroit?

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

Hillary Clinton made a campaign stop in Las Vegas yesterday. She said she wants citizenship for undocumented immigrants. But after seeing Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo yesterday, immigrants said, 'You know what, we're good. We're gonna head back now. We had enough.'

Chicago is not a bad place to live. But the usual story of immigration is the happy fulfillment of human potential in America that is not available anywhere else - it's propaganda, really. It's more complicated than that.

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.

It seems that immigrants often have a special understanding of the incredible opportunities that this nation affords its citizens.