Anzia Yezierska Quotes

The Jews integrated themselves into American life to the point that the argument that the Jews aren't American sounded so stupid, that people stopped thinking it.

It is often not even wise to try to make an American of the best of aliens.

Every wave of immigrants who came [to America] were treated pretty badly, but when they all finally became integrated, all of us became Anglo-Saxons.

Some Americans need hyphens in their names, because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name.

When you become an American, they give you an injection so your accent changes.

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.

However great his outward conformity, the immigrant is not Americanized unless his interests and affections have become deeply rooted here. And we properly demand of the immigrant even more than this. He must be brought into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations and cooperate with us for their attainment.

They say that immigrants don’t speak English. So? Who cares. Even the Irish learned English after a while.

Yes, Europe needs to be more welcoming, but that's only half of it. Muslims need to embrace the obligations of European residence and citizenship.

Immigrants have to adopt our values, not the other way around.

It's hard enough being American and trying to make it in an American world, but being Australian, you're from a whole different country and have a whole different way of doing things.

We take foreigners to be incomplete Americans -- convinced that we must help and hasten their evolution.

I can cite a chapter and verse of literature at the times saying Italians don't speak our language, these folks coming from other places - it sounds identical to what you are saying about Muslims now. It really does.

People came to America and they did not abandon their own cultures, but they assumed new ones, a new one, an American culture rooted in liberty and freedom that they had never enjoyed in their lives prior. They didn't have to sacrifice who they were. They didn't have to change or give it up, but they were eager to become Americans.

One of the defining characteristics or difference between today's illegal immigration and the immigration of old is the immigrants of the late 1800s through the early 1920s came here desiring to become Americans. They wanted to become part of what was a unique and distinct American culture. They were all coming from tyranny of one kind or another.

My parents left Iran in 1979 and moved to France and then moved to the U.S. My brother was born in France and I was born in New York. I think my parents left France because they felt their kids would never be accepted by French culture. Here they thought we could feel American - that we could feel safe in that way - which was important to them, given what their experiences were in Iran. They used to joke about how I could be president because I was the only one born in America.

If I were an immigrant Latino not born in the US, I could not have written Searching for Whitopia: An Improbably Journey to the Heart of America book. And that is because many of the Whitopians would not have been comfortable talking about their views on immigration, talking about their views on taxes. And they wouldn't have spilled to me the new script on race and poverty as they did.

People from all over the world came to America and assimilated into a single culture rooted in the founding, which is rooted in individual liberty and primacy of citizen over government. Everybody who came here, that's what drew them.

The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here.

Film, as any immigrant will tell you, television and movies is the way we make sense of America when we first got here.

In novels and autobiographies, the first positive move that the immigrant makes towards assimilation is to buy himself a suit of city clothes.

America was, in the eyes of so many people, and it's what people respect America for, it is people have been able to come here, find a place, contribute to the economy. That's what immigration has been in America.

I am neither romantic nor a visionary, and that is my weakness and perhaps my power; at any rate it is one difference. In less romantic and visionary terms, I am a Jew, (with powers of introspection and eclecticism attendant, perhaps.) But I am alien to your natural grace, to the spirit which you would know as a participator in America.

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.

We have to be honest about the fact that not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate. Sometimes it's just not going to work out.