Eric Liu Quotes

As immigrants, we understand better than most that to be an American is a privilege that conveys not just rights but responsibilities.

I've always believed that immigration is really about who we are as a country and what we're willing to stand up for.

What makes America special is that people come here, assimilate and become American with all of the rights and responsibilities citizenship bestows.

Citizenship must be precious, not handed out like candy in a parade. We don't ride along and throw out citizenship like you do M&M's or Tootsie Rolls or whatever it is we're tossing out in our parades.

Citizenship is a privilege. We don't grant it to people because they think they deserve it. What have you done for the United States?

If the undocumented have to work hard to attain citizenship, those of us who already are citizens should have to work hard to sustain it. We should all have to serve more, vote more, build more, and do more for our country.

In order for critical pedagogy, dialogue, and thought to have real effects, they must advocate the message that all citizens, old and young, are equally entitled, if not equally empowered, to shape the society in which they live.

We have a whole bunch of young people and a whole bunch of families. Are we going to disrupt these families and tear them apart? Or are we going think, like, listen - these people are here. We've got to deal with this reality. We've got to extend the franchise.

We need to tell young people that America was built by men and women of all colors and that the future of this country is dependent on the participation of all of our citizens.

Whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, or what our last names are, or how we worship.

For the state of our union to be strong, we need to place value in Americans.

We are a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.

I want to be fighting for a society accountable towards its citizens.

In Psalm 72, Solomon prays for power and fame but he says the purpose of influence is to speak up for others and one is the immigrant. He doesn't delineate between legal and illegal.

All nations that are liberal of naturalization toward strangers are fit for empire.

I was born here. My children were born here. What the hell do I have to do to be called an American?

The modern idea of citizenship goes some way to accommodating the tension between solidarity and diversity. Citizenship is not an ethnic, blood-and-soil concept, but a more abstract political idea - implying equal legal, political and social rights (and duties) for people inhabiting a given national space.

If citizenship means anything, it means sharing the pleasures and pains of American life.

Each generation of Americans must define what it means to be an American.

One of these days every person in Canada will be a Canadian.

An actual residence of such a length of time as would give a man an opportunity of esteeming the Government from knowing its intrinsic value, was essentially necessary to assure us of a man’s becoming a good citizen.

I think citizenship should count for something... and it really counts for nothing.

I figured if you live in a country long enough, you want to be a part of the political process, and you sort of owe it to your hosts. They've accepted you. Why wouldn't you accept them?

We are a nation of immigrants - all of us.

I think it's important to be reminded that that's what this country is comprised of - people from other countries.