Linda Chavez Quotes

If you are going to vote in this country, you should be a citizen. To be a citizen in this country, you should know English.

Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.

When you become an American, they give you an injection so your accent changes.

[Referring to immigrants:] They're all over the place, and they don't speak English. Do we want more of this?

President Bush said that if illegal immigrants want citizenship, they'd have to do three things: pay taxes, hold meaningful jobs, and learn English. Bush doesn't meet those qualifications.

English should be our official language. Reading and speaking English are requirements to become a citizen.

Millions of us, myself included, go back generations in this country, with ancestors who put in the painstaking work to become citizens. So we don't like the notion that anyone might get a free pass to American citizenship.

They say that immigrants don’t speak English. So? Who cares. Even the Irish learned English after a while.

IMMIGRANTS, NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT. Take It Or Leave It. I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture…. We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society. Learn the language! …. If you aren't happy here then LEAVE. We didn't force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted.

Foreigners may be admitted to citizenship by naturalization, either collectively or individually. Collective naturalization may occur when a foreign territory and its inhabitants are transferred to the United States.

When you come to America, you get to become an American, and Trump, who has grandparents who came to the U.S., should understand this as much as anybody.

In the U.S., those requesting a Green Card must take an oath that they will fulfill the rights and duties of citizenship.

United States naturalization is a privilege not a right, and those who have had this privilege bestowed upon them must respect and uphold the laws of our land.

To become an American citizen, we require people to read, write and speak in English. That is to help them to assimilate in our melting pot, truly to become Americans. We mock that when the cherished right to vote does not involve English any more.

I came here when I was almost 22. I'm perfectly bilingual, but I'm never going to sound like Sandra Bullock.

Here's a proposal, offered only partly in jest: no resident of the United States, whether born here or abroad, should get to be a citizen until age 18, at which time each such resident has to take a test.

We must insist on assimilation - immigration without assimilation is an invasion. We need to tell folks who want to come here, they need to come here legally. They need to learn English, adopt our values, roll up their sleeves and get to work.

Most Americans have parents or grandparents who immigrated to this country, and we know the hardships they faced, from learning the language to dealing with prejudice.

My folks came to U.S. as immigrants, aliens, and became citizens. I was born in Boston, a citizen, went to Hollywood and became an alien.

Naturalization is the process by which a citizen, or subject of a foreign nation or kingdom, is made a citizen of the United States. It is evident that the Constitutional Convention thought that it was important that this process should be placed under the exclusive control of the Federal Government and not of the States.

It takes more than just walking across the border to become an American citizen. It's what's in our souls.

I was born in the U.S., my wife was born in Mexico and emigrated here when she was in college, and my daughters were born in New York City. That makes them passport-carrying, natural-born, eligible-to-run-for-president Americans. But they're also Mexicans and they like that just fine.

Citizenship obtained through naturalization is not a second-class citizenship.

Our naturalization and immigration laws should be further improved to the constant promotion of a safer, a better, and a higher citizenship. A grave peril to the Republic would be a citizenship too ignorant to understand or too vicious to appreciate the great value and beneficence of our institutions and laws, and against all who come here to make war upon them our gates must be promptly and tightly closed.

I didn't move to Miami to live in a Spanish-speaking province.