507 Quotes About Immigration

In May 1925, President Calvin Coolidge signed the National Origins Act into law. The new law effectively closed the United States to most Jewish immigrants. During the debate, Coolidge told the American people:"Restricted immigration is not an offensive but purely a defensive action... We cast no aspersions on any race or creed, but we must remember that every object of our institutions of society and government will fail unless America be kept American.

The German stamp on Wisconsin endures in the state's commitment to efficient agriculture, hard work, education, culture, and to good citizenship and political freedom - all of which were an integral part of the German immigrant's language.

Je marche et je ne me retourne pas. C'est la règle, si tu te retournes, tu es foutu, tu perdras la boule, c'est ce qu'on m'a dit et répété avant le départ et je crois que c'est vrai. Donc j'avance sans jeter un regard sur ce que je laisse derrière moi.

There's nothing good about diversity, other than the food, and we don't need 128 million Mexicans for the restaurants.

In America my mother has eyes as strong as boulders, never once skittering off a face, but she has not learned to place decorations and phonograph needles, nor has she stopped seeing land on the other side of the oceans. Now her eyes include the relatives in China, as they once included my father smiling and smiling in his many western outfits, a different one for each photograph that he sent from America. (1983: 59)

The constant cry is that you belong here, or you make yourself belong, or you must go. (1998: 319)

My mother is not smiling; Chinese do not smile for photographs. Their faces command relatives in foreign lands - 'Send money' - and prosperity for ever - 'Put food in front of this picture.' My mother does not understand Chinese- American snapshots. 'What are you laughing at?' she asks. (1983: 58)

An exchange student from Afghanistan "finds himself in the midst of America's circus of self-invention" as he experiences Halloween for the first time. His hosts bauble, "It's the greatest of holidays when you can become anything you want.

These officials changed names they couldn’t pronounce and tore people from their families, consigning to a return voyage old folks, people with bad eyes, riffraff and also those who looked insolent. Such power was dazzling. The immigrants were reminded of home. ” Ragtime