Immigration Story Quotes

As little boys, my brother and I used to spend hours with my grandmother, asking her about the details of how she came to America. She could only give us a smattering of details, but they all found their way into our collective imagination, eventually becoming a part of our own cultural identity and connection to the past.

America is a country formed by diverse communities from different countries. Overall, the country is very hospitable and gives opportunities to grow. Saying that, I'd also say I'm not a 'white' immigrant; a South Asian's experience is different than, say, a European immigrant's.

I'm an immigrant, a legal immigrant to the United States. I only became a citizen five years ago. Every day, for seven months, I pinched myself as I was walking in and out of the West Wing, so it's only in America, right? Only in America.

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.

Almost any American can connect on some level to a family background of having come across some ocean. They say, 'My great-grandparents came from wherever... this is why we have this last name, why we do this thing at Christmas.' All the details get watered down but don't quite disappear.

My father is Nigerian; my mother is from Texas and African-American. My father was the first in his family to go to university. He flew from Nigeria to Los Angeles in the '70s to go to UCLA, where he met my mother. They broke up before I was born, and he returned to Nigeria.

My parents grew up in a village where they didn't even have running water. They are first generation immigrants who are proof that arranged marriages can work, although I wouldn't want one.

I am a first-generation American of Chinese decent. My parents were both born and raised in China and moved to the U.S. in their 20s.

My story is the American dream that my parents fled Cuba for.

As the son of an immigrant family, I am happy to be a guest in U.S, which was largely built by such families.

People ask where I'm from, and I say 'Los Angeles.' Then they ask again. 'Well, my parents are from Korea.'

My father was the orphaned son of immigrants to the United States from Ireland. My father never knew his parents. His mother died - we're not sure - either at or shortly after his birth, and he and all of his siblings were placed in orphanages in the Boston area.

My dad grew up in Nicaragua in his teenage years, then immigrated to the United States.

Have you ever watched someone become American? Last week, at a national citizenship conference I organize, thirty immigrants from 17 countries swore an oath and became citizens of the United States. It was a stirring experience for the hundreds of people in the room.

My mother was from upstate New York; she's of Irish and German descent. My father was from Ghana.

My grandparents on my father's side came to this country from the Caribbean with a strong connection to Africa and no shame about it.

I handed my passport to the immigration officer, and he looked at it and looked at me and said, 'What are you?'

I'm half-Chinese and half-Caucasian. My grandparents came here from China. My father was born in New Jersey.

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.

For my parents it was all about getting a deal, my dad came to America and he heard of this concept of brunch. He didn't quite know what it was. And he thought it was this other meal that existed between breakfast and lunch. He was kind of like - I remember he sort of was like America has so much food that between breakfast and lunch they have to stop and eat again. They have brunch. It was completely legal it was, like, a legal meal that you could have. I mean, clearly it wasn't the only reason he came to America, but I think it certainly sweetened the pot for him.

When I first moved from Shanghai when I was five, I just thought of myself as Chinese.

Superheroes are also about immigrants. Superman, the prototype of all superheroes, is a prototypical immigrant. His homeland was in crisis, so his parents sent him to America in search of a better life. He has two names, one American, Clark Kent, and the other foreign, Kal-El. He wears two sets of clothes and lives in between two cultures. He loves his new country, but a part of him still longs for his old one.

I was the first person to come into New York with a Latin American point of view which was also very much influenced by political happenings in Latin America.

I knew I had to write about Canada. I just could not find in literature any examples of the immigrant experience that I've had.

My grandfather was from outside of Moscow, and my grandmother, although some of her family were French, was from Odessa. They met as immigrants in New York in the early '20s. My mother's family came over from Ireland generations ago.