Herta Muller Quotes

I was unwelcome in the U.S. for four years.

You can't undo a deportation.

Oppressed strangers in our land…

If someone comes here illegally, we owe them absolutely nothing.

Deportation is [not] a punishment; it is simply a refusal by the government to harbor persons whom it does not want.

The banishment [of Russian Jews], whether by direct decree or by not less certain indirect methods, of so large a number of men and women is not a local question. A decree to leave one's country is in the nature of things an order to enter another—some other.

I'm an immigrant. I came here when I was 3 months old.

We need to believe Donald Trump when he bullies and threatens to throw out every immigrant in the country.

I think what he [Donald Trump] has said is that people are not going to be eligible for legalization or citizenship unless they leave the country and get back in line.

We will have a mechanism for dealing with people in this country that - you heard the word humanely again. It is going to be fair. It is going to be tough. But there will be no path to legalization, no path to citizenship unless people leave the country.

People who want to come to this country don't have constitutional rights. Once they get here, they do. But coming here is not a constitutional right. So with do, as a nation, have the ability and should have the ability to decide who comes here and when they come here.

Safely welcoming those seeking refuge into our country is the right thing to do.

We need deportation centres.

I remember when we were in Egypt as refugees. It was tough, but there was always hope - hope that there's light at the end of the tunnel.

If I was prime minister for a day the first thing I would do would be to close the border. Then we could work out how many people we've got here. Then you get people out who have committed crimes and you look at others who shouldn't be here. Nobody knows how many people we've got here.

As I got older, I had more experience with borders. Some literal - living in the dramatically blue misty mountains on the line between North Carolina and Tennessee, and living in California - home to expats, transplants, and refugees from both sides of innumerable borders.

Movement of people is taking place on an immense scale, and from a European perspective, the number of potential future immigrants seems limitless.

The ongoing migration of persons to the United States in violation of our laws is a serious national problem detrimental to the interests of the United States.

It's very important that people understand that for refugees to come into the USA is very difficult. What upsets me about the whole situation is that people don't know the difference between a migrant and a refugee; they don't have respect for what people are coming from - the people who against it - and they have completely forgotten this is what built our country, the diversity. When it is put forward that masses of people are dangerous, and the actual numbers and the situation are proven to be completely the opposite of the way they're presented publicly, it's horrible.

Under my administration, anyone who illegally crosses the border will be detained until they are removed out of America and back to the country from which they came.

I love Europe, but we are still struggling with that kind of development. First of all, we don't have a smart conversation about the difference between an immigrant and a refugee. A refugee can't go back. An immigrant is someone - I chose to move to America. And I also have the option of saying hey, didn't work out, I can move back. That's a completely different story than someone who is locked in.

The result of Hillary Clinton misconduct was the release of thousands and thousands of dangerous criminal aliens who should have been sent home to their countries. Instead we have them all over the place.

Countries in which immigration will be suspended would include places like Syria and Libya.And we are going to stop the tens of thousands of people coming in from Syria. We have no idea who they are, where they come from. There's no documentation. There's no paperwork.

Hillary and I will do immigration enforcement and we'll vet refugees based on whether they're dangerous or not. We won't do it based on discriminating against you from the country you come from or the religion that you practice.

America is a nation of immigrants. We have to have a functioning immigration system.