Emmanuel Jal Quotes

I'm Russian Jewish. And I had to grow up really quickly.

Being a great believer in Scottish tradition, I followed the example of my fellow countrymen and moved to England.

I think that's what makes many Swedes jealous of immigrant groups. You have a culture, an identity, a history, something that brings you together. And what do we have? We have Midsummer's Eve and such silly things.

I feel I have a responsibility to carry out the immigrant story, since it's one that I hold very dear to my heart, since my story is similar in a lot of ways.

Toronto is a very multicultural city, a place of immigrants, like my parents.

It is my great good luck the words I use are English words, which means I live in a very old nation of open borders; a rich, deep, multi-layered, promiscuous universe, infused with Latin, German, French, Greek, Arabic and countless other tongues.

Most of the people who live in Washington come from other places and you can learn something from them.

The film 'Documented,' a project of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Define American campaign, is about my families: the family I was blessed to be born into, and the family of friends, mentors and allies that I found when I moved to the United States at 12, a Filipino kid trying to make sense of my new home in America.

I was a redhead when I first came to America.

Every single immigrant is part of a larger history that needs to be communicated in all its ambivalences and complexities.

We're a migrant nation made up of people who've been torn out of other worlds, and you'd think we would have some compassion.

Culture is the air we breathe all around us.

I always identified myself as non-Swedish. I was never discriminated against, because I looked Swedish and speak without an accent. But I had an outsider's perspective.

The Africans know I'm not an African. I'm an American.

Once you are an immigrant, you never forget that you are one.

Here, we tell the story: why the people came here, what they did when they got here, going back to the Native Americans and coming all the way forward.

I'm an immigrant and I've always wanted to write something about America.

I never wanted to change countries; it's something that is part of me.

There's a big difference between race and culture. Because racially, I'm an Indian man. Culturally, not at all.

I'm as proud to be Chinese as I am American.

I became more interested in the idea of being an immigrant and particularly of being in a country you're not familiar with. And so I began reading migrants' stories. The fact that my father is Chinese - he emigrated from Malaysia when he was about 20 - may have had some bearing on my attraction to the subject.

Everybody came from somewhere here in New York.

What about a white South African who comes here from Africa. Is he an African American?

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.

They are already here...they are called Hungarians!