Tim Kaine Quotes

Traditionally, the ideology of the United States nationhood perpetuated the myth that immigrants would shed their particularistic ethnic identities and loyalties. Eventually these “strangers” would be assimilated into a homogeneous body politic that was based on the equality of individual rights.

This is nothing less than a national tragedy…. It is time to consider these refugees arriving from Poland and elsewhere purely on their merits as migrants and in an unsentimental light. In the last 50 years these people have swarmed all over Europe, coming principally from Armenia, Russia and the Balkans. We should remember that they are European neither by race, standards, nor culture. They are, in fact, an Eastern people. In 2000 years no one but Britain has been successfully able to absorb them, and for the most part they owe loyalty and allegiance to none.

We used to have a view that to really be a good Australian, to love Australia, you almost had to cut your links with the country of origin. But I don’t think that was right and it never was right.

There are neighborhoods in France that are not French… Why would immigrants want to change France is they left their country to live in France? .. You have two kinds of people living in France: The French and the others…. To offer something to the world, France has to remain France.|

In other countries, being from somewhere else is celebrated. But not in America.

Immigration without assimilation is an invasion.

You know that American dream and American spirit of innovation we always talk about? Turns out, the bulk of it was built by people who came to America from somewhere else, not people born American. We have no birthright or natural lock on these things.

In Britain, you never get away from the fact that you're a foreigner. In the U.S., the view is it doesn't matter where you come from.

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.

America was born as a nation of immigrants who have always contributed to its greatness.

Although I don't have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears.

For the tidal wave of new immigrants Canada is more a land for the realization of private dreams than for maintaining a ... compact between founding races. No common identity was provided for the millions of new Canadian immigrants other than a week vision of mutual multi-cultural indifference.

Immigrants want to change our values and our way of life.

There is no such thing as National character or National Sentiment. The Inhabitants are from all quarters of the globe; and as various in their opinions, projects and schemes, as their manners and habits are from their early education.

There is less and less of France abroad, and more that is foreign in France.

California must be all American or all Chinese. We are resolved that it shall be American, and are prepared to make it so.

Part of America's genius has always been its ability to absorb newcomers, to forge a national identity out of the disparate lot that arrived on our shore.

We are a British nation with British characteristics. Every country can take some small minorities and in many ways they add to the richness and variety of this country. The moment the minority threatens to become a big one, people get frightened

Countries like France, Italy and the Netherlands may pay lip service to inclusion, but the ethos in those places is that immigrants can never really become French, Italian or Dutch, no matter what their passports say. The emphasis is on tolerance and respect, but there’s no real expectation that foreign nationals fit in.

We can't restore our civilization with someome else's babies.

I find myself increasingly forced to think of my ethnic identity instead of the national identity I adopted as a boy in 1976. That is discomfiting for me, and a tragedy for America.

We would like to preserve Europe for Europeans.

America has always been a land of diversity, basically made up of immigrants, and that is something I want to see continued. It's something I'm proud of when people think of America.

The bedrock of this country are immigration and, really, a great separation between church and state.

The hyphenated American is ridiculous. But that's what we have to put up with. I think that any person that's in the United States is better off here than they would be where they came from.