Immigrants Quotes

“That was the day I learned how dangerous a color can be. That a boy could be knocked off that shade and made to reckon his trespass. Even if color is nothing but what the light reveals, that nothing has laws, and a boy on a pink bike must learn, above all else, the law of gravity.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“As a child of immigrant parents, as a woman of color in a white society and as a woman in a patriarchal society, what is personal to me IS political.”
― Mitsuye Yamada

“From the summer of 1909 to the end of 1911, New York waist makers - young immigrants, mostly women - achieved something profound. They were a catalyst for the forces of change: the drive for women's rights (and other civil rights), the rise of unions, and the use of activist government to address social problems.”
― David von Drehle, Triangle: The Fire That Changed America

“The young immigrants in the garment factories, alight with a spirit of progress, impatient with the weight of tradition, hungry for improvement in a new land and a new century, organized themselves to demand a more fair and humane society.”
― David von Drehle, Triangle: The Fire That Changed America

“Should 'sleep' be plural? No, sleep is an idea, like love, no s. So many decisions in a single simple sentence. Exhausting, this elaborate dance of words.”
― Thanhha Lai, Butterfly Yellow

“And this is something Solomon must understand. We can be deported. We have no motherland. Life is full of things he cannot control so he must adapt. My boy has to survive.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“Something crackles on my skin like a fire. He felt me in that moment, he understood what it was to me.”
― Kelly Loy Gilbert, Picture Us in the Light

“Would Jesus build a wall? Would Mother Teresa? No, of course not. They would welcome the refugees and give them free universal healthcare.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, How to Defeat the Trump Cult: Want to Save Democracy? Share This Book

“American teachers said I was illiterate, so they put me in ELL classes. Although I spoke English, I did not speak their English.”
― Tiffany Desiree, Nature, Sex, and Culture: A Tree of Discombobulated Thoughts

“My father had a job in the factory across the way, and because he'd lost his leg, he had a stump... and in the summer... he'd work on this assembly line 8 hours a day and he was home at night. And I heard him weeping in the dark around 1 o'clock in the morning and I knew that no matter what I ever did ... that I had to honor that pain. I think that's what the children of immigrants do, all of us. We know what they gave up. They gave up their countries. In some cases they gave up their languages. They worked at the lousiest, rottenest jobs in order to put food on our table. We have to honor that, for the rest of our lives.”
― Pete Hamill

“And I believed him. It was genuine, that confusion, and that was the first time I really saw him, I think- when I understood that his social persona was concealing none of what I'd always thought it was, but actual kindness instead, that there was a kind streak at his core.”
― Kelly Loy Gilbert, Picture Us in the Light

“The victims of right-wing violence are typically immigrants, Muslims, and people of color, while the targets of environmental and animal rights activism are among “the most powerful corporations on the planet” — hence the state’s relative indifference to the one and obsession with the other.

The broader pattern helps to explain one partial exception to the left/right gap in official scrutiny—namely, the domestic aspects of the “War on Terror.” Al Qaeda is clearly a reactionary organization. Like much of the American far right, it is theocratic, anti-Semitic, and patriarchal. Like Timothy McVeigh, the 9/11 hijackers attacked symbols of institutional power, killing a great many innocent people to further their cause. But while the state’s bias favors the right over the left, the Islamists were the wrong kind of right-wing fanatic. These right-wing terrorists were foreigners, they were Muslim, and above all they were not white. And so, in retrospect and by comparison, the state’s response to the Oklahoma City bombing seems relatively restrained—short-lived, focused, selectively targeting unlawful behavior for prosecution. The government’s reaction to the September 11th attacks has been something else entirely — an open-ended war fought at home and abroad, using all variety of legal, illegal, and extra-legal military, police, and intelligence tactics, arbitrarily jailing large numbers of people and spying on entire communities of immigrants, Muslims, and Middle Eastern ethnic groups. At the same time, law enforcement was also obsessively pursuing — and sometimes fabricating—cases against environmentalists, animal rights activists, and anarchists while ignoring or obscuring racist violence against people of color. What that shows, I think, is that the left/right imbalance persists, but sometimes other biases matter more.”
― Kristian Williams, Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America

“I made many decisions, some awful and others brilliant, but I found ways to keep that openness in my soul that meant more to me than breathing. I told them over the years what I was doing, how I was trying what no one in my family had ever tried to do. When I was failing, I admitted that as well, and they listened politely. I also knew that’s all they could do. One lonely night in Connecticut, I pulled myself from a window’s ledge. No one else next to me. Another day I chose to do something someone like me should have never accomplished, and yet I did, and kept going. I learned to recognize when others, like Jean, were much better than me, because they had faith in my soul. I believed in very little, but I kept going until I would get tired or defeated, and then I would take time to discover another wall to throw myself at. I was, and I am, and I will be, a peculiar kind of immigrant’s son. I got old, and that made everything better, including me.”
― Sergio Troncoso, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son

“Hitler’s Nazi mob didn’t think of themselves as the bad guys. They thought of themselves as the victims of evil foreigners. Just like Trump’s MAGA mob.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, How to Defeat the Trump Cult: Want to Save Democracy? Share This Book

“Americans need a fresh reminder of the amazing nation they have and the power of liberties I see so often taken for granted.”
― Ali Master, Beyond the Golden Door: Seeing the American Dream Through an Immigrant's Eyes

“Those working in slaughterhouses, for example, are often underpaid and overworked, lack insurance, and are required to use dangerous equipment without adequate training. Turnover and rates of injury for jobs in anymal industries are among the highest in the United States. Slaughterhouse employees are almost always poor, they are often immigrants, and they are inevitably viewed by their employers as expendable. Moreover, if we would not like to kill pigs, hens, or cattle all day long, then we should not make food choices that require others to do so. Our dietary choices determine where others work. Will our poorest laborers work in fields of green or in buildings of blood? Fieldwork is difficult, but I worked in the fields as a child, and I am very glad that I never worked in a slaughterhouse.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Animals and World Religions

“His mother used to swat at his shoulders in a way that looked playful but felt serious when he spoke too much English and not enough Chinese; his weapon of choice had been the language that made her dependent on him.”
― Lisa Ko, The Leavers

“Grandparents treat them better than they treated you. They know the babies are going to leave again. Old age softens people."

"Send him back," said Hetty. "It's the only way."
"Free babysitting," said Ming.

The two women laughed, but their laughter was the kind with no core, only loose edges.”
― Lisa Ko, The Leavers

“He is convinced--and what immigrant isn't?--that all Americans are crazy.”
― Sigrid Nunez, A Feather on the Breath of God

“Indeed, the majority of immigrants migrate to feed families, and also contribute, to build the economy of the host country. However, having the right to perform their values; it defines human rights and freedom, as the insight of respect, away from distinctions.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“The first and worst problem of migration illustrates that mostly immigrants miss and even lose its culture, literature, language, values and the atmosphere of religious surroundings and family connections; whereas, the second and gravely matter that unable and unwilling to adopt the new ones since the cat and lion features look like the similar; however, cannot be the same. As a fact, immigrants live and breathe in the circus, having the best care and all facilities, but not as a birth nature, where they belong. It is a tragedy of feelings, which no one views and realizes seriously.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“I grew up listening to languages my immigrant parents didn't want to teach me, so I get a regressive pleasure out of feeling my way through sounds to their possible meanings. Not "getting" a word, or a line, or a poem at first read was never an obstacle for me — in fact, it was a seduction.”
― Ange Minko

“As the nation diversifies, the homogeneous communities that people seem to prefer become increasingly fine grained. When immigrants become landlords, many rent only to people from their own country. Apartment buildings can become entirely Korean, Salvadoran, or Guatemalan, for example. Immigrant landlords are often unaware of non-discrimination laws, and do not hesitate to tell others they are not welcome. A lawyer for Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles noted that some managers rent only to people from a particular state of Mexico, adding, 'Our fair housing laws haven't even anticipated that.”
― Jared Taylor, White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century

“You tell me you are a poet. If so, our destination is the same.
I find myself now the boatman, driving a taxi at the end of the world.
I will see that you arrive safely, my friend, I will get you there.”
― Carolyn Forché

“Years from now we might be saying it's hyperbolic to compare someone to Donald Trump, because we will be quite sure no one could be that cruel.”
― Thor Benson

“Kilkadziesiąt lat życia w totalitarnym systemie kształtuje totalitarne postawy, potrzebę autorytarnej władzy. To daje poczucie bezpieczeństwa, bo jest znajome. To niewielki krok z jednego totalitarnego systemu do partii, która zapowiada kolejny totalitarny system. Wiara w tamten system upadła wraz z nim, ale w coś trzeba wierzyć, i oto ktoś proponuje nowy przedmiot wiary. Kto wyrósł w totalitarnym systemie, ten tęskni za porządkiem, jasnymi regułami, brakiem niepewności i relatywizmu. Polska, Czechy, Węgry [Ukraina] też są dobrymi przykładami. I każde irracjonalne myślenie potrzebuje wroga. Pod ręką są imigranci.”
― Ewa Wanat, Deutsche nasz. Reportaże berlińskie

“It is absolutely necessary to their structure that there should be no contact with foreigners except to a limited extent with war prisoners and colored slaves. Even the official ally of the moment is always regarded with a darkest suspicion. War prisoners apart, the average citizen of Oceania never sets eyes on a citizen of either Eurasia or Eastasia and he is forbidden the knowledge of foreign languages. If he were allowed contact with foreigners, he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken and the fear, hatred and self-righteousness on which his moral depends might evaporate. It is therefore realized on all sides that however often Persia or Egypt or Java or Ceylon may change hands, the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs.”
― George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

“The citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenants of the other two philosophies, but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous, outrageous upon morality and common sense. Actually, the three philosophies are barely distinguishable, and the social systems which they support are not distinguishable at all. Everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure, the same worship or the semi-divine leader, the same economy existing by and for continuous warfare.

It follows that three super states not only cannot conquer one another but would gain no advantage by doing so. On the contrary, so long as they remain in conflict they prop one another up like three sheaves of corn, and as usual, the ruling groups of all three powers are simultaneously aware and unaware of what they are doing. Their lives are dedicated to world conquest but they also know that it is necessary that the war should continue everlastingly and without victory.”
― George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

“She would look wistfully at the sky, and she relished her favourite freezing cold, north-easterly winds, that blew bitter draughts that mixed with her drifting tobacco smoke throughout the home, ‘They are the spirits of the old country,’ she would always say.”
― Jim Lowe, New Reform

“Y'all have a song?'

H nods. 'Bất-tơ-phơ-lai de-lồ.'

'Butterfly yellow? You mean yellow butterfly.'

H starts to explain but pulls out her notebook. The most prepared notetaker on earth.

Bướm = butterfly, vàng = yellow.”
― Thanhha Lai, Butterfly Yellow