Immigrants Quotes - Page 15

You discover how confounding the world is when you try to draw it. You look at a car, and you try to see its car-ness, and you’re like an immigrant to your own world. You don’t have to travel to encounter weirdness. You wake up to it.

Shaun Tan

Discovery, Car, Trying

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...despite all this, it is still hard to admit that there is no one more English than the Indian, no one more Indian than the English. There are still young white men who are angry about that; who will roll out at closing time into the poorly lit streets with a kitchen knife wrapped in a tight fist. But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears - dissolution, disappearance.

Zadie Smith

Men, White Man, Knives

Zadie Smith (2003). “White Teeth”, p.272, Vintage

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Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.

Zadie Smith

Children, Moving, Islands

Zadie Smith (2000). “White teeth”

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Tomorrow you're all going to wake up in a brave new world, a world where the Constitution gets trampled by an army of terrorist clones created in a stem-cell research lab run by homosexual doctors who sterilize their instruments over burning American flags. Where tax and spend Democrats take all your hard-earned money and use it to buy electric cars for National Public Radio and teach evolution to illegal immigrants. Oh... and everybody's high!

Stephen Colbert

Running, Army, Brave New World

"2000 Presidential Election: Bush vs. Gore" by Ryan Bort, www.esquire.com. November 5, 2014.

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The struggle is inner: Chicano, indio, American Indian, mojado, mexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black, Asian--our psyches resemble the bordertowns and are populated by the same people. The struggle has always been inner, and is played out in outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must come before inner changes, which in turn come before changes in society. Nothing happens in the "real" world unless it first happens in the images in our heads.

Gloria E. Anzaldúa

Real, Struggle, Psych

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I think it's really important to realize that small businesses are often the portal for immigrants into the New York City economy.

Christine Quinn

New York, Thinking, Cities

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More than any other nation on Earth, America has constantly drawn strength and spirit from wave after wave of immigrants. In each generation, they have proved to be the most restless, the most adventurous, the most innovative, the most industrious of people. Bearing different memories, honoring different heritages, they have strengthened our economy, enriched our culture, renewed our promise of freedom and opportunity for all.

William J. Clinton

Memories, Opportunity, America

"Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1998".

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Immigrant families have integrated themselves into our communities, establishing deep roots. Whenever they have settled, they have made lasting contributions to the economic vitality and diversity of our communities and our nation. Our economy depends on these hard-working, taxpaying workers. They have assisted America in its economic boom.

Edward Kennedy

Hard Work, America, Roots

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What we did with deeming rules were designed - it was designed to keep costs from coming on to the government that should be borne by families of immigrants who actually have incomes and can afford to pay.

William J. Clinton

Government, Immigration, Income

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In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.

William J. Clinton

Self, Years, Law

William J. "Bill" Clinton's State of the Union address, millercenter.org. January 24, 1995.

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All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens.

William J. Clinton

Country, Jobs, Numbers

William J. "Bill" Clinton's State of the Union address, millercenter.org. January 24, 1995.

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We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.

William J. Clinton

Self, Years, Law

State of the Union Address, millercenter.org. January 24, 1995.

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Our policy is guided by the principle that we will keep unauthorized aliens out of the United States, welcome legal immigrants, and protect refugees from harm. Our solutions rely on working in partnership with States and communities.

William J. Clinton

Community, Principles, Immigration

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Our immigration policy is focussed in four areas: First, strengthening border control; second, protecting American jobs by enforcing laws against illegal immigrants at the workplace; third, deporting criminal and deportable aliens; fourth, giving assistance to states who need it, and denying illegal aliens benefits for public services or welfare.

William J. Clinton

Jobs, Law, Giving

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[Illegal immigration] costs the taxpayers of the United States a lot of money. And it's unfair to Americans who are working every day to pay their own bills. It's also unfair to a lot of people who have waited in line for years and years in other countries to be legal immigrants.

William J. Clinton

Country, Years, People

William J. Clinton “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, William J. Clinton, 1995, Bk. 1, January 1 to June 30, 1995”, Government Printing Office

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Let me be clear: we are still a nation of immigrants, and we honor all those immigrants who are working hard to become new citizens.

William J. Clinton

Honor, Immigration, Citizens

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Most illegal immigrants are not by nature lawbreakers. Most are looking for the chance to live in dignity. Nevertheless we must continue to discourage illegal immigration for it undermines control of our borders...and even more punishes hard-working people who play by the rules and who wait for their turn to come to the United States. Therefore we must enforce our laws, but we will do so with justice and fairness.

William J. Clinton

Hard Work, Law, Play

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We are all the sons or daughters of immigrants - some more recent than others - but all dedicated to the triumph of an idea that serves as the touchstone of what it means to be an American. This America is the only America that we have hitherto known - if being conservative has anything to do with conserving the principles of our past, then no conservative has any business bashing legal immigration.

Jack Kemp

Daughter, Mean, Son

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What I'm talking about is the order of deportation, the sequence of deportation. It is almost impossible to move 11 million illegal immigrants overnight. You do it in steps.

Michele Bachmann

Moving, Order, Talking

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In my view, immigrants today aren't any different from immigrants who have come to America throughout our nation's history. They bring new ideas, an entrepreneurial spirit and close family ties. They place a high value on education. And they are eager to achieve the American Dream. ... It's to our benefit to keep our doors open, and to keep enriching our economy and culture. I'd like to see America continue to do so.

Dick Armey

Dream, Doors, Views

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We have the most generous immigration policy, but what is a concern is when illegal immigrants come and undermine a variety of the systems that work in order to make our society function.

Madeleine Albright

Order, Immigration, Our Society

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I'm very inspired by him-it was my father who taught us that an immigrant must work twice as hard as anybody else, that he must never give up.

Zinedine Zidane

Soccer, Giving Up, Father

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Immigrants to America help us with the work they do. They challenge us with new ideas, and they give us perspective. This is still the nation that more people around the world want to come to than any place else. That has to tell us something about ourselves. If around the world this is the place people want to come to so much, maybe there's more here than many of us realize-and that many of us can take advantage of.

Rudy Giuliani

Ideas, America, People

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In fact, allowing immigrants to have licenses actually improves homeland security by allowing our government to track who is in our borders.

Joe Baca

Government, Track, Borders

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In a land of immigrants, one was not an alien but simply the latest arrival.

Rudolf Arnheim

Land, Aliens, Arrivals

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