Immigrant Background Quotes

I wasn't born to a wealthy or powerful family - mother from Puerto Rico, dad from the South Bronx.

I feel like I have so many amazing opportunities because of my immigrant mother, my immigrant grandparents.

As the youngest child of a single immigrant mother with a third-grade education, I never thought in my wildest dreams that I'd ever be an elected official.

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.

Coming from an immigrant background, where a lot of parents don't want their kids to be comedians, success was just showing my mom that I could make a living. I was like, if I can get my mom off my back, that was my success.

I'm from a lower middle class background; all my family were immigrants.

I come from an immigrant culture. I'm only a couple of generations away from having been a servant girl myself.

Both of my parents were first-generation Americans, the children of Jews who left Eastern Europe around the turn of the century.

As the son of legal immigrants to America who came from India, I support stronger border security for our nation as well as deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes.

You catch any white man off guard in here right now, you catch him off guard and ask him what he is, he doesn't say he's an American. He either tells you he's Irish, or he's Italian, or he's German, if you catch him off guard and he doesn't know what you're up to. And even though he was born here, he'll tell you he's Italian. Well, if he's Italian, you and I are African even though we were born here.

I'm Greek-American, and I come from an immigrant-type background, and Greek-American parents want you to be a doctor or a lawyer. Because that's how you make money, and it's very respectable.

I'm first generation American, and my parents were both from Nigeria.

My dad was an immigrant kid and a Democrat and a Jew, and we didn't know any Republicans in our group. So I grew up Democratic. My dad was a labor lawyer - a very hardworking guy, a one-horse labor lawyer - and then I went to hippie college and lived in the bubble.

I saw my parents come over. They were immigrants, they had no money. My dad wore the same pair of shoes, I had some ugly clothes growing up, and I never had any privileges. In some ways, I think the person that I am now, I think it's good that I had that kind of tough upbringing.

I am a first generation American, and my family is from Bulgaria.

I'll also tell you that to no less extent my mom, who was the daughter of Irish immigrants.

I'm a second-generation migrant. My parents came to this country from Pakistan, just like the Windrush generation.

I think my parents were immigrants, you know, so I guess I would be first generation. Growing up in California.

My early childhood prepared me to be a social psychologist. I grew up in a South Bronx ghetto in a very poor family. From Sicilian origin, I was the first person in my family to complete high school, let alone go to college.

That's what actually caused me to run for office is, you know, my family story, the experience of growing up in a family where your dad had been imprisoned, had been tortured, and came to America with nothing, washing dishes for 50 cents an hour. That was perhaps the most formative experience of my childhood, is being raised in that household where freedom had an urgency.

My parents were ignorant peasants from the Old World.

I grew up in northwest London on a council estate. My parents are Irish immigrants who came over here when they were very young and worked in menial jobs all their lives, and I'm one of many siblings.

I was born in Montreal in 1939, the second son of poor immigrants.

I am a granddaughter of immigrants, put myself through college as a waitress, and I started my career as a computer programmer.

I have both Swedish and Iranian cultures ingrained in me, so that's always there. Plus my love of the U.S. began early on. But growing up in Sweden as one of the few people of color around was not easy by any means.