The Immigration Quotes

#1. In fact, I think we're less safe. We get so distracted by all of the information, we're not spending enough time getting specific immigration - specific information on terrorists.

Ted Cruz

#2. The immigration issue is, I recognize, one that generates a lot of passion, but it does not make sense for us to want to push talent out.

Barack Obama

#3. I don't see how the party that says it's the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter century.

Newt Gingrich

#4. As part of his administrative reforms, Suleiman lowered taxes on peasants in his Empire. This led to immigration of Christian peasants who left the rest of Europe to live and work in the Ottoman Empire.

Firas Alkhateeb

#5. The Obama administration will continue to fight for a comprehensive immigration solution that includes AgJobs and a stable workforce for our farms.

Tom Vilsack

#6. George Soros finances liberal immigration policy throughout the Western world and also funds Noel Ignatiev and his "Race Traitor" website dedicated to the abolition of the white race. So

Kevin Macdonald

#7. Many years have passed since I first discovered you. You troubled me then. You trouble me now. But mortality, like thunder, rumbles its dull way toward me. It is I who must take the step. Through the fire. And come unto you.

Caryl Phillips

#8. Don't just talk about Hispanics and say immediately we must have controlled borders. It's kind of insulting when you think about it. Change the tone would be the first thing. Second, on immigration, I think we need to have a broader approach.

Jeb Bush

#9. We also need to strengthen the security of our borders and ports and strictly control immigration.

Jim Ramstad

#10. All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian.

Pat Paulsen

#11. When John Quincy Adams in the Netherlands was placed with elementary students and belittled because he did not speak Dutch, either the author or John Adams accuses school authorities of "littleness of soul".

Paul C. Nagel

#12. The conflict between the creatures of Native Lore and the immigration of the European preternatural hosts is hinted at in 'Blood Bound' and reflects the conflicts between the human immigrants and the Indian people who were already here.

Patricia Briggs

#13. Canadians tend to be a bit more religious than most Europeans - though not more than the Poles or Ukrainians. Most important, their attitude to immigration and ethnic minorities is more positive than that of most Europeans.

Timothy Garton Ash

#14. Britain needs to change its immigration system - and the only way to do that is to vote Leave.

Harsimrat Kaur Badal

#15. Keep the immigrants. Deport the Columbia faculty

Jason L. Riley

#16. In England, in France, in no other country would a black man have a chance to get elected. There's no two ways about it. Our country [USA] has been better about dealing with immigration and people who are different from each other than any other country in the world, that I know of.

Randy Newman

#17. After using a paint chart from a local DIY superstore to identify the skin tone of his penis as midnight chocolate, Miriam stayed down on one knee and offered him the citizenship he had always wanted and the middle-aged white woman he would grudgingly accept.

David F. Porteous

#18. The Statue of Liberty was so resonantly reimagined as a monument to immigration that few remember it was built as an anti-slavery monument, uniting Republican France and the victorious Union

Anonymous

#19. The Republican Party looks at massive immigration, legal and illegal, as a source of cheap labor, satisfying a very important constituency.

Tom Tancredo

#20. The Roman Church has grown and grown, fueled by immigration but also renewed by two pontiffs who have seemed to understand what Tocqueville knew: People want guidance for their souls once they are convinced they have them.

Hugh Hewitt

#21. I am not the 'illegal' you think I am, and immigration is not what you think it is,

Jose Antonio Vargas

#22. In terms of immigration, we're seeing a lot of Democrats and Republicans use the really elastic term, 'Comprehensive Immigration Reform,' and they don't totally understand what that means. For us in El Paso, it's part of a larger discussion about the nature of the border.

Beto O'Rourke

#23. Unlicensed, illegal immigrants are the safest drivers on the road.

Dov Davidoff

#24. My position on immigration has been clear for a long time. I believe the federal government ought to do their job. You know, secure our borders. Come up with an immigration policy that Americans understand and people who want to come to this country understand.

Rick Scott

#25. As we all came to discover the limitations of assimilation, we grew closer as a family

Miguel Syjuco

#26. Congress is the appropriate place to make laws about our country's immigration policy; it is not something that the president gets to decide on his own.

John Barrasso

#27. When it comes to immigration reform, now is the time ... I've never seen a better political environment ... I'm not doing immigration reform to solve the Republican Party's political problem. I'm trying to save our nation from, I think, a shortage of labor and a catastrophic broken system.

Lindsey Graham

#28. As a newcomer to America who learned to 'speak American' by watching movies, I firmly believe that to change the politics of immigration and citizenship, we must change culture - the way we portray undocumented people like me and our role in society.

Jose Antonio Vargas

#29. If we are to believe that our immigration laws simply have no value, as our current policies would have us believe, should we then simply throw them all out, the entire lot of immigration law? I hope not.

John Linder

#30. He had 'deep concerns' with the pathway to citizenship for the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants under consideration by the group, calling it 'profoundly unfair' to legal immigrants.

Ted Cruz

#31. We have the most generous immigration policy, but what is a concern is when illegal immigrants come and undermine a variety of the systems that work in order to make our society function.

Madeleine Albright

#32. I want to help correct the inaccurate image of immigration in the media. There is an idea that women's issues are over here and immigration is over there. Three quarters of undocumented workers are women and children.

Gloria Steinem

#33. The American people are not anti-immigrant. We are concerned about the lack of coherence in our immigration policy and enforcement.

Chris Cannon

#34. I have fought on the front lines to prevent illegal immigration. I know Donald Trump will stand with me and countless Americans to secure our border.

Joe Arpaio

#35. He had put them [his family] first by coming home [to India] and the irony was that they had put him first by arranging this marriage. He had walked into it with his eyes open. But his eyes had been open too long in the West and by the time he adjusted his vision to India, it was too late.

Anne Cherian

#36. The immigration must be limited, that is, first and foremost the foreign cultural one.

Carl I. Hagen

#37. Let's face it.., our current [immigration control] system is like a busy intersection without a traffic cop: sure there are laws on the books, but absent enforcement, there are too many accidents.

Ronald Reagan

#38. Unless the Stream of their Importation could be turned ... they will soon so outnumber us, that all the advantages we have, will not in my Opinion be able to preserve our Language, and even our Government will become precarious.

Benjamin Franklin

#39. I'm not anti-Muslim, I'm not anti-immigration; I'm saying we've got big problems in our cities. It's not very smart to make the problem bigger by letting in millions more immigrants from rural Muslim cultures that don't assimilate.

Pim Fortuyn

#40. I still believe the momentum is there to accomplish comprehensive immigration reform, and I think there is a bipartisan coalition that would pass right now, a pathway to citizenship if Speaker Boehner lets it come to the floor.

Joaquin Castro

#41. Bitumen, the new national staple, is redefining the character and destiny of Canada. Rapid development of the tar sands has created a foreign policy that favours the export of bitumen to the United States and lax immigration standards that champion the import of global bitumen workers.

Andrew Nikiforuk

#42. The divergence of songs in the new population away from those in the progenitor population would only be prevented if these processes were balanced by repeated immigration and subsequent breeding: song flow.

Peter R. Grant

#43. Immigration and travel certainly don't mean the same thing everywhere. Here in Cuba, the big wall isn't just the fact that it's an island, but the fact that we need an exit permit in order to leave, and the letters of invitation in order to visit another country.

Fernando Perez

#44. I would have to say all of the civil rights acts, because there were three, and even, say, the Immigration Act, which I think also is a civil rights act, maybe on a global perspective, that he cared very, very much about it.

Lynda Bird Johnson Robb

#45. I smiled at him. America, I said quietly, just like that. What is it? The sweepings of every country including our own. Isn't that true? That's a fact.

James Joyce

#46. Once you join the queue for the immigration line, pay attention to what the expeditor tells you. Have your papers ready. Don't have your cell phone out. Take off your hat. Open your passport to the page with your photo and present it to the immigration officer already open.

Hanya Yanagihara

#47. I'm for immigration reform. I think the system's horribly broken, and we need to do something about it.

Rand Paul

#48. I respect those who openly advocate for unlimited immigration to the United States. Open borders is an intellectually coherent, defensible position.

Jan C. Ting

#49. I hope I'll have the opportunity to debate how we reform and update our immigration system. I will relate my own story and that of the countless immigrants whose American Dream stories have helped build our country into the greatest nation in the world.

Ami Bera

#50. We should be the pro-legal immigration party. A party that has a positive platform and agenda on how we can create a legal immigration system that works for immigrants and works for America.

Marco Rubio

#51. Illegal immigration presents a huge problem. That is why I decided to spend a week along the southern border to see firsthand how bad the problem is and, more importantly, what Congress can do to fix it.

Ric Keller

#52. The only people benefiting from the status quo in immigration in the USA are the people trafficking human beings across the border, and the people who are hiring illegal labor for cheap purposes.

Marco Rubio

#53. We watched the U.S. citizenship immigration services web site in March. They had six million, two hundred thousand hits, and two million people downloaded applications for citizenship. So what we're doing is attempting to help people in that process.

Luis Gutierrez

#54. Butterflies have always had wings; people have always had legs. While history is marked by the hybridity of human societies & the desire for movement, the reality of most of migration today reveals the unequal relations between rich & poor, between North and South, between whiteness and its others.

Harsha Walia

#55. [It is] one of the most complex and emotional issues of out time.

Barbara Jordan

#56. People think [immigration] is only about the dollar, but it's so much more complex. This is a place where you can reinvent yourself. I don't know that you can do that anywhere else.

Esmeralda Santiago

#57. Immigration reform doesn't impact me personally; nothing my foundation works on does. But the truth is I have a long history of ties to Latin America. Some of my best friends are in Latin America.

Howard Graham Buffett

#58. I think most Americans would agree that we need sensible solutions that fix our immigration system and deal humanely with aspiring citizens currently in our country. At the same time, these solutions must increase the security of our borders.

Linda Sanchez

#59. Securing the border is priority number one.

Mitt Romney

#60. If I am elected president we will secure the border and we will end the illegal immigration.

Ted Cruz

#61. The largest untapped constituency in American politics are the 300 million American citizens who have been completely left out of the immigration debate.

Jeff Sessions

#62. On Immigration policy and reform [Republicans] are on the wrong side of the track ... They would have you believe that if they get into office, they are going to make sure that they are going to get rid of everyone in our society who was not born in America.

Maxine Waters

#63. I recently spoke with Barbara Jordan of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, and I increasingly believe we need a system to verify employment eligibility. The Commission's recommendation of a national registry may be the way to go.

William J. Clinton

#64. At the very end, what is going to happen is that immigration will be reduced considerably. And how can we get to that stage? By agreements on sectors.

Vicente Fox

#65. If we conservatives "of color" refuse to promote the welfare state, unfettered abortion, affirmative action, and massive immigration, we are guilty of "selling out.

Michelle Malkin

#66. We can see that immigration has become favorable terrain for the development of Islamism.

Marion Marechal-Le Pen

#67. Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them.

Thomas Sowell

#68. The Russian Federation has a growing Muslim minority, which is causing cultural and religious clashes. This is similar to mass immigration of Mexicans to America, and certain presidential candidates are tailoring their campaigns to get Mexican votes.

David Duke

#69. Congressional mistakes have dramatically increased immigration through a series of what I believe were ill-advised actions going back to 1965 when the basic notions of our immigration laws were revised. In 1990, Congress opened the floodgates by passing a 35-percent increase in legal immigration.

Ronald Reagan

#70. I believe on the issue of immigration, you have to deal with it sensibly.

Mark Rutte

#71. The immigration thing has to be brought to a head, and I feel that the best way to do that is endorse the worst, in the sense of he is a racist and he knows what I'm talking about.

Tom Metzger

#72. I think something substantial will pass out of the House at some point during this term.

Justin Amash

#73. Stop illegal immigration. Stop these trade deals that are taking jobs from Americans. Build an economy that works for the people at the bottom, not just the ones at the top.

Mike Huckabee

#74. I'm not wise enough to know what is the right immigration policy for the United States of America.

Donald E. Graham

#75. We will have to accept a certain degree of legal immigration; that's globalisation ... In the era of the smartphone, we cannot shut ourselves away ... people know full well how we live in Europe.

Angela Merkel

#76. There is so much work to be done to treat gays and lesbians and gay and lesbian couples with the respect that they're entitled to. They deserve, in my judgment, partnership benefits. They deserve to be treated fairly when it comes to adoption and immigration.

John Edwards

#77. Independent of politics, the changing narrative on immigration is directly correlated to the fact that we have new technologies that are allowing people to talk to each other and tell their own stories and organize themselves.

Jose Antonio Vargas

#78. The ground was scorched, the streets teemed with refugees, and these Americans were playing at fleeing! As if they had something to resent, to despise, to scorn, to run away from! As if they weren't the lords of the earth.

Cynthia Ozick

#79. There is a common perception that there are two alternative libertarian positions on immigration: government-controlled borders and open borders. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is only one libertarian position on immigration, and that position is open immigration or open borders.

Jacob G. Hornberger

#80. Out of college, I had two job offers. One was to be a canoe instructor for Outward Bound. And frankly, that would have paid better than the job I took, working on a policy commission in Washington that focused on immigration policy and refugees. But that decision made all the difference.

Rob Portman

#81. The interesting point is that the polarization is not so much among the public, although there's some of that. The polarization on the immigration issue is really between the elites and the public. In other words, this is not so much a right-left issue, which it is partly.

Mark Krikorian

#82. I think immigration system that we have is terrible for the United States of America. We have a legal immigration system that does not work. It does not reflect the economic needs of this country in the 21st century. It needs to be modernized.

Marco Rubio

#83. In the zero-sum budget game, every dollar spent on this problem [illegal immigration] must be taken from somewhere else ... No, we should not tolerate people immigrating illegally. But we need to treat this issue honestly and fairly.

Leon Panetta

#84. Only adults had nervous breakdowns in those days, so the methods of survival for boys who refused to join the system were animal cunning, "internal immigration" as the Germans call it, or simply getting the hell out. I practised the first two, then opted for the third and took myself to Switzerland.

John Le Carre

#85. Because of the long, long history of British shipping, immigration, trade, empire, missionaries, you can have a better shot at telling a worldwide story in the British Museum's collection than any other. Britain has been more connected with the rest of the world than any other country, for longer.

Neil MacGregor

#86. Although it requires some adjustment by those already here, immigration has made the U.S.A. the most prosperous nation on Earth.

Jeff Hawkins

#87. I will do everything that is required in order to bring immigration down to a level that is manageable, that the public believe is right.

Michael Gove

#88. As an immigrant, my wish is that we fix immigration. At Sequoia, we've backed a number of exceptional founders that were born abroad but started their careers in the Valley. They've created immense value, but more importantly, massive numbers of jobs locally, nationally and globally.

Alfred Lin

#89. Economic conservatives like immigration reform, and in fact, many of them supported the bill that John McCain and I put together in the Senate.

Chuck Schumer

#90. The recent, single-year influx of unaccompanied minors from foreign countries into the United States is a direct result of President Obama's policies of encouraging amnesty and failing to enforce existing immigration laws.

James Lankford

#91. Environmentalists have been outspoken in their support of smaller family size and abortion rights as keys to reducing global warming. But when it comes to immigration, the single biggest contributor to population growth in the industrial world, they stand largely silent.

Gary Bauer

#92. I want immigration reform to pass, I want people to be able to come out of the shadows.

Marco Rubio

#93. I'm in favor of liberalizing immigration because of the effect it would have on restaurants. I'd let just about everybody in except the English.

Calvin Trillin

#94. Immigration is the ultimate entrepreneurship.

Sam Yagan

#95. It was left to the Progressive movement in America (as to the Fabians in Britain) to promote eugenics, Prohibition, dietary fads, the compulsory sterilisation of those they deemed 'unfit', and preferential treatment in immigration law of 'Nordic' (and preferably Protestant) immigrants.

Markham Shaw Pyle

#96. By balancing the needs of families and employers, and by extending a safe haven to those fleeing persecution, our immigration policy serves its historic purpose. Freedom and opportunity is the cornerstone of American society, and immigrants continue to embody that freedom.

Spencer Abraham

#97. I believe immigration reform is a commitment of President Obama's government, especially since it gives him a chance to respond to the great demand expressed by U.S. Hispanic voters.

Enrique Pena Nieto

#98. Unfortunately, the administration's plan is an ounce of cure for a pound of problems.

Charles Schumer

#99. With all the negativity going on in the world right now, people need an escape. When you give them a hit record or a great record, it allows them to escape for at least three to four minutes. They're not thinking bills or economy or immigration or war when you create that kind of ambiance.

Pitbull

#100. 'District 9' was a singular anti-Apartheid metaphor, and 'Elysium' is a more general metaphor about immigration and how the First World and Third World meet. But the thing that I like the most about the metaphor is that it can be scaled to suit almost any scenario.

Neill Blomkamp