Juanes Quotes

My grandfather came over from Puerto Rico and raised his kids speaking English so that it would be easier for them to assimilate.

My dad is an ob-gyn - he's retired now - and he wanted to come to the States to make a better life, for opportunity. My mom said that, on the plane ride here, I did not want to speak a word of English - I spoke Tagalog. And then, after the first day of school, I didn't want to speak anything but English.

Most previous immigrants came to the United States to become Americans, with no intention of returning home. They relinquished their ties with their homeland. English was their key to prosperity, and they worked hard to master it.

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

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.

Anyone that has come to America past the age of eighteen will be able to understand when I say that you can never shake your accent.

My father was the son of immigrants, and he grew up bilingual, but English is what my father taught me and what he spoke to me. America's strength is not our diversity; it is our ability to unite around common principles even when we come from different backgrounds.

My parents, fleeing a repressive regime in the Dominican Republic, were embraced by this country and taught us to love it in return. After my father served proudly in the U.S. Army, they settled in Buffalo, N.Y., and were able to live the American Dream.

I've inherited a sense of that loss from my parents because it was so palpable all the time while I was growing up, the sense of what my parents had sacrificed in moving to the United States, and yet at the same time, building a life here and all that that entailed.

I was born in America but all of my friends' parents, everybody's parents, including my own, had come to America from Europe. Many people in my neighborhood hardly bothered to learn English.

I didn't choose to come to the United States, but being raised here has shaped exactly who I am today, and I can't imagine that being taken away from me.

My parents didn't feel that they had any choice but to leave the Dominican Republic. They did, however, choose to become Americans, and they lived American values every day.

I immigrated to the United States in 2001 for college.

My father, when he arrived in this country found it difficult.

I arrived in the U.S.A. in 1935, to San Francisco. I got the boat from China, and I didn't even speak English. I could read a little, perhaps write a little, but that was all. It was a 17-day journey, and I learnt to speak English from the stewards.

I came to this country when I was 13 years old, I couldn't really speak English, and I had an accent.

I was born in New York City in 1926, four years after my parents and my brother migrated to the United States from the city of Odessa in Russia.

As a first generation Jewish American, I have witnessed firsthand Jewish immigrants who have come to this Nation in order to create a better life for themselves, their families, and future generations.

I want people to experience what it's like being from Haiti, coming to America, being Wyclef - multicultural, multilingual.

I was a redhead when I first came to America.

I was born in Costa Rica and we moved to America where it was a whole new world for me.

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

I came to America to make it my home, and I did.

Although I feel very French, a part of my heart is in the States. When my brother and I arrived, we didn't really speak any English, and when we left, that's all we spoke when we played together. It was just a beautiful place to grow up.

America is remarkable, don't you think so? When I came to Washington, I was twelve years old. I spoke English with an English accent. It was assumed that it would go on in that way.