Hasan Minhaj Quotes

Our theme for this year's festivities, Dreams and Challenges of Asian Pacific Americans, speaks to the many generations of Asian Pacific Americans who worked hard to overcome economic hardship, racism and other barriers in their pursuit of the American dream.

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 had immigrant grandparents who came to this country and came for religious freedom and loved it, never made any money, Bronx, Brooklyn, but loved America. And they told me every day it's the greatest country in the world.

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 people who came here came for economic reasons or sometimes for religious or political reasons. I didn't have any of this. I came here, I liked it, I stayed. So I'm a pure American - even more than people who are born here - because I did it by choice as an adult.

I'm very proud of the Italian heritage of my great-grandparents, who came here from Italy, and how they helped be a part of the American Dream, and that's something we want to continue to make available to everybody who wants to come here.

I'm the daughter of refugees. The immigrant mentality is to work hard, be brave, and never give up in your pursuit of achieving the American dream.

Ed Koch once said that New York City is where immigrants come to audition for America. That's what happened to my parents; that's what happened to me.

My dad came from Cuba when he was a teenager not speaking English. And I grew up here speaking Spanglish. That's the world in which I grew up, and that's a world in which a lot of second generation immigrants find themselves.

Like other important immigrant communities, the Jewish experience in the United States represents the ideal of freedom and the promise and opportunity of America.

There are a lot of people in Beverly Hills who come from the Middle East, who are very much a part of the Beverly Hills fabric, and their kids grew up with the privileges of Beverly Hills. And yet they still have to deal with a lot of the prejudice against them for being foreign-born.

I really feel that my life story is a continuation of the Great American Dream - the immigrant who comes to this country and is allowed to excel. How many other countries would let me do that?

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

You're a white South African, and right away you have to explain yourself. Occasionally, I get hassled until I explain my point of view. I have to make it clear that I don't live there anymore, and I don't approve of the brutal racial policies.

Most American Jews came from the lower middle classes, and therefore they brought with them not a lot of Jewish culture. The American Jewish story starts with Ellis Island, and the candy store in the Bronx.

I don't think France is a racist country, I really don't, but we do still have many problems with our immigrant past, and there's a shame that goes with that, that works both ways, in the host and in the post-immigrant generation.

A lot of Broadway has that immigrant narrative of America as a place where you can become something else against all odds.

My dad is from Panama; he came to the U.S. in 1971. He came to study chemical engineering at the University of Delaware. He thought he would go back, and then he met my mom here. I was born and mostly raised in Delaware.

Latinos come from different countries, and they tend to segregate with only their country instead of embracing all the other countries, because in reality, all the Latinos are going through the same experiences of discrimination and racism.

I've spent my career trying to help people without connections understand what's going on so that they have a chance of getting a fair shake from the connected and the powerful.

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.

The conventional wisdom is that people come to the United States, and immigration is so great, and they say, 'America, what a great country.' And a lot of that is true.

My great-grandfather, like many, came to this country in search of the American dream.

In becoming an American, from Europe, what one has in common with that other immigrant is contempt for me-it's nothing else but color.

I would say to you that Americans of Hispanic descent want desperately to give their children the chances they never had.