Refugee Status Quotes

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it, Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese — and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.

Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, most of them... unless they are breaking Canadian laws .. are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here.

When there is a Palestinian state, it will absorb hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria and Lebanon, because these states will simply expel all of these refugees.

The Jews who have arrived would nearly all like to remain here.

How can a human being be illegal?

After forming government in 2019, the BJP will undertake a nationwide identification of illegal infiltrators living in the country.

No migrant of any religion has a constitutional right to come to the United States.

I am a refugee: my parents fled Chile under Pinochet in 1976 when I was 9 months old, and my parents were able to start from nothing and make lives for themselves in the United States.

Cubans who arrive and can prove that they are refugees who are truly fleeing political persecution will continue to qualify as refugees. The only thing that I've asked for is to do away with automatic benefits granted to someone, basically, Cubans who come from Cuba, if it cannot be verified that they are refugees fleeing political persecution, so they will be treated the same way as any other immigrant who arrives in the United States, which is that legal immigrants in the United States don't have the right to any federal benefits for five years.

I'm a Muslim Egyptian-American, born in Cairo. I grew up in Kuwait until the first Gulf War, when my family relocated to the United Arab Emirates. As an adult, I studied and lived in the U.K. before moving to Boston.

Going back to the discussion we were having about immigration reform, some of the most challenging discussions I've had are with activists who essentially would argue that any immigrant from Central America, let's say, who gets here to this country should be allowed to stay because their country is dangerous, their country is poor, and the opportunities for that mom and that kid are much greater here, and why would you send them back?

Any country that grants asylum to Snowden risks retaliation from the United States, including diplomatic isolation and costly trade sanctions. Several don't seem to care.

You try turning up in America without documents, without a visa, without a passport; you'll be treated as very, very much illegal.

Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters.

Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in, and leave Canada.

I hear from non-Afghan immigrants - Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs in France - all the time. These people have had to redefine their lives, which is what my family went through when we came to the U.S. in 1980.

I think we should be pushing for amnesty and a path to citizenship for every undocumented person residing in the United States who has not committed a violent crime, with a special emphasis on keeping families together.

Prisoners, according to the law, who are non-U.S. citizens and are detained outside the U.S. - including in Guantanamo Bay - are denied 'habeas corpus.' They are also denied the right to claim the Geneva Conventions confer certain rights on them.

In the '70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered if they'd take my passport away.

Journalists casually use terms like crossing the border illegally when referring to asylum seekers - when in fact there is no law that says they must use the ports of entry.

The policy is anyone who's here illegally is here illegally, does not have the right to be here. We'll decide whether it's in our interest to let them stay or not. Perhaps it is in our interest to let some of them stay.

Immigrants are illegal, since once they set foot on European soil, they have violated the law.

Well, you know, I left Cuba as a kid when I was 6 years old back in 1971.

Asylum under the traditional definition doesn't necessarily include people coming here for economic reasons, but I think one of the biggest things we need to do is expand legal immigration so people can do that legally.

All people have a natural and inherent right to emigrate from one State to another