507 Quotes About Immigration

We are not meant to be in this country. We did not want to come. We were forced to flee or die. Americans perceive desperate brown masses swarming at their golden shores, wildly inventing claims of persecution for the opportunity to flourish in this prosperous land. The view from beneath the bridge is somewhat different: reluctant refugees with an aching love of their forsaken homeland, of a homeland that has forsaken them, refugees who desire nothing more than to be home again.

Zoe leaned closer to Ruth, nearly nose to nose. “If they were made from better stuff, they would have pretended the fault was theirs. They would have made a moment of it--a pretty moment.

Diplomacy is so weak and prosaic. Diplomacy must never become an end, itself. Facts are so much more important in science. Yet, I'm beginning to appreciate the value of a soft word and a smile. --Unassimilated pg 294

Now, where are [Mexican illegal immigrants] fleeing from? Mostly from Central America, where they’re fleeing from the results of our policies.

Very good,” she lied. Zoe had learned not to burden loved ones with God’s unwanted children. She had come to America with her gigantic hopes, intending to save money and rescue the sisters who had once rescued her. She wasn’t trying to save the world--just them.

Had she made a mistake in bringing them here? They'd given up everything they'd known and loved to start over here, but what if there was no new beginning here? What if it was just the same hardship and hunger they'd left behind? Or worse?

Immigrant. The word carries currency. Loaded. Weighed down by a politics of emotionality. Fear reigns and rules. It shrouds policy and reaches into these borders of manufactured fear where the walls are thick with America's rewritten history of immigration, featuring the accents of bigotry and unapologetic open political warfare turning small screens of news shows into horror movies where caged children are vilified and their proponent, America's forty-fifth president, is deified.

We move from one invisibility to another.

A nation which expects its biological survival from immigrants won’t survive.