I have experienced power as a journalist. On three different occasions, when I wrote about individual immigrants or refugees, the article – or, in one case, my presence in the courtroom – appeared to positively change the outcome of their cases.
My parents, Romanian immigrants, struggled to provide me a better life than the ones they had left in their homeland. They worked hard to give me every opportunity in life, and once I showed natural talent as a young gymnast, they spent every last penny on my training.
When you get to know a lot of people, you make a great discovery. You find that no one group has a monopoly on looks, brains, goodness or anything else. It takes all the people – black and white, Catholic, Jewish and Protestant, recent immigrants and Mayflower descendants – to make up America.
I come from a family of working people. My parents were Guatemalan immigrants who spent most of their lives in the service industry.
Once we lose our border protection, the road to citizenship, voting and welfare benefits for a flood of new immigrants will be all but paved.
If we grant immigrants moral agency, we assume that they are capable of abiding by the law, and that they are legally responsible when they do not.
I served on active duty in the U.S. Air Force and currently serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. Yet I still experience people telling me to ‘go back’ to China or North Korea or Japan. Like many immigrants, I have learned to brush off this racist insult.
One nice thing about the benefit of long experience with la frontera is that we in Texas don’t have to run around getting all hysterical about immigrants. The border is porous. When you want cheap labor, you open it up; when you don’t, you shut it down. It works to our benefit – it always has.
Allowing illegal immigrants that are gang members and criminals with COVID to enter the U.S. and receive citizenship is a slap in the face to the American people and the rule of law.
I mean, we must act with intelligence. We must work on this framework, so that immigration becomes an asset to both nations. Believe me, what – just the Mayor Bloomberg said here in New York, that this city would be stopped, totally stopped if it were not by the immigrants working here.
Immigrants provide skills that we simply cannot afford to do without. They have contributed hugely to Britain’s success.
We must honor our country’s tradition of openness and continue to welcome new immigrants.
Conservatives, in general, are anti-immigrant for the same reasons they have always been anti-immigrant – a proud tradition in our nation of immigrants going back to the days of the Founders, when Ben Franklin thought we were going to be overrun by Germans. But Business likes illegal workers.
We are indeed a nation of immigrants. People who choose to come to America have always been one of our greatest sources of national vitality. They keep our economy strong and our communities dynamic. They are some of our greatest patriots.
Throughout history, groups of Americans have attacked immigrants who fled danger and destruction at home and arrived in America hoping for the opportunities those of us born here are lucky enough to enjoy.
I am undoubtedly one of the more, if not the most, privileged undocumented immigrants in America. And for us at Define American, which is this culture campaign group that I founded with some friends, culture trumps politics.
For years, President Obama has chastised Republicans, used immigrants as props for political purposes, and time and again deflected responsibility from his own party’s failure to act on immigration reform.
Nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants currently live within our borders. That’s 11 million people living in the shadows whom we know next to nothing about.
‘Avatar’ imaginatively revisits the crime scene of white America’s foundational act of genocide, in which entire native tribes and civilizations were wiped out by European immigrants to the American continent.
Los Angeles is the strongest defender of immigrants perhaps of any city in this country.
America was built by immigrants. Immigrants come here for work – to contribute and get to a better place. That’s my story. It’s a story of hope.
If you want to stop illegal immigration, you have to make it so that – so that the people that hire the illegal immigrants will not be in a position to hire them.
The other aspect of American identity worth focusing on is the concept of America as a nation of immigrants. That certainly is a partial truth. But it is often assumed to be the total truth.
There’s a big difference between France and the U.S. In the U.S., immigrants must work to live. In France, they’re taken care of by public finances. In France, there are millions of unemployed people already. We cannot house them, give them health care, education… finance people who keep coming and coming.
America offers the most amount of people the best opportunity to pursue happiness on the planet. That’s why millions of illegal immigrants have poured into the country – most of them poor. They believe they have a shot to improve themselves economically.
As a son of Jamaican immigrants whose father cut sugarcane as a contract farm worker for over a decade and whose mother was a cook who fed those migrant workers out in the fields, the odds have always been against me growing up in rural South Bay, Fla.
How do we form a coalition of resistance without obliterating our differences? Not all lives matter, and we are not all the same immigrants.
The library helps lower- and middle-income people – immigrants – get their shot at the American dream.
I’m the child of immigrants.
Our country stands at a critical point in its history. Our heritage as a nation of immigrants is at stake.
It has given me a global vantage point, being the daughter of immigrants from China, who had nothing when they came here. And now I am leading a company. It speaks to something deep in me, the concept that you don’t have to start with anything.
Our Nation’s immigration laws are disrespected both by those who cross our borders illegally and by the businesses that hire those illegal immigrants.
The criminal justice system should have the authority to determine the immigration status of all criminals, regardless of race or ethnicity, and report illegal immigrants who commit crimes to federal authorities.
To be the child of immigrants from Eastern Europe is in itself a special kind of experience; and an important one to an author. He has heard two languages through childhood, the one spoken with ease at home, and the other spoken with ease in the streets and at school, but spoken poorly at home.
I am the son and grandson of immigrants. And I know that securing our borders is not anti-immigrant and we will do it.
My parents are Jamaican immigrants and both have a multiracial background. They’re Jamaican but my genetic makeup is West African, European, Asian.
Births to illegal immigrants now account for nearly one out of every ten births in the United States.
Our young immigrants have a lot to offer. They are motivated and hard-working, and in many cases have already contributed significantly to our society – by excelling in school, by volunteering in their communities, or by serving in the military.
I love immigrants. Legal, illegal – they’re not to be despised.
In the immigration debate, some things are constant. They never change. One is that opponents of immigration reform will use it as a wedge issue and will blame everything from unemployment to rising health care costs on immigrants.
Have you ever watched someone become American? Last week, at a national citizenship conference I organize, thirty immigrants from 17 countries swore an oath and became citizens of the United States. It was a stirring experience for the hundreds of people in the room.
Trump errs on the side of bluster sometimes for effect, but I don’t think that the people who voted for him, most of them, would ever be for not caring for immigrants or refugees. People in the church know it’s our obligation.
The Trump administration recognizes that most refugees and immigrants are good people, but practical and temporary measures must be taken to keep this nation safe from the few bad individuals who seek to harm us.
Immigrants have always come into the country with low levels of education. Whether it’s the Irish or Italian or Polish, here is the land of opportunity. It’s where people come in at the bottom and build themselves up. To try to bring in people who have already made it is un-American.
Though my parents were professionals and expected me to go to college, they were immigrants from India with no idea about how the admissions process worked in the United States or the importance of standardized tests.
My belief in why America has been doing so well up to now is that we have been propelled by our immigrants and our encouragement of technical innovation and, indeed, creativity across the board.
OneAmerica worked over the course of a decade to bring the movement of immigrants and communities of color together with the movement for marriage equality in Washington.
I’m blessed to be around some of the same guys that I came into this business with and learning of off each other and watching each other’s experiences as young immigrants and trying to thrive in this world.
