Mexican Immigrants Quotes

There is a certain pride in work and in your body throbbing beyond any boundaries you imagined you could endure. You identify with those who come home with pieces of pork fat wedged into their boots, with gashes on their arms and legs from their tools and machines, and with black grime etched into the folds of their dark skin.
Too often this country has turned its back on the working class and the working poor, not to mention the undocumented workers who harvest the food for American tables and build our houses. ~ Sergio Troncoso

I'm a full-blooded Mexican. My mother was born in Zacatecas, Mexico, and my father - the son of Mexican immigrants - was born near Fresno, California. ~ Michael Trevino

We must curtail the flow of illegal immigrants across the Mexican border. ~ Zach Wamp

Donald Trump creates scapegoats in Muslims and Mexican immigrants. He calls for the use of torture. He calls for killing the innocent children and family members of terrorists. He cheers assaults on protesters. He applauds the prospect of twisting the Constitution to limit First Amendment freedom of the press. This is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss. ~ Mitt Romney

John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath' also speaks urgently to today's concerns: the cratered trail of dreams for Mexican immigrants seeking a promised land in the Western [United States]; the perfidy of banks in foreclosing on poor people's homes; and the insurgent urge of the book's protagonist, Tom Joad, to speak truth to police power. 'Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy,' Tom promises, 'I'll be there.' In Salinas, Calif., Ferguson, Mo., or Staten Island, N.Y., Tom's truth goes marching on. ~ Richard Corliss

The disconcertingly fecal image of Moroccans as "undifferentiated brown stuff" has a counterpart in imagery used more recently in discussions of illegal immigration from Latin America to the United States, a country alleged to be "awash under a brown tide" of Mexican immigrants (as almost a century earlier, the American anti-immigrationist Lothrop Stoddard had warned that white America was soon to be swamped by a "rising tide of color"). The significance of the expression "brown tide" may not be obvious to all readers. The term refers to an algae infestation specific to the Gulf of Mexico that turns seawater brown. ~ David Livingstone Smith

In fact, allowing immigrants to have licenses actually improves homeland security by allowing our government to track who is in our borders. ~ Joe Baca

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

Actually this is really funny - one time she accidentally forgot to leave a note and I had no idea she had even moved. I was living in the house with a beautiful Mexican family for three months before I realized they weren't my cousins visiting from out of town. They were so nice. They called me "Quien es, quien es," which I thought was a beautiful name. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

My mom was married to a Mexican guy - a surfer - and so we'd kind of camp out on the beach the swell season. ~ Cary Fukunaga

that weird sour body odor only monsters have, like a skunk that's been living off Mexican food. Grover ~ Rick Riordan

Because the truth is, today's immigrants, as they have for generation after generation, work the longest hours at the hardest jobs for the lowest pay, jobs that are just about impossible to fill. ~ Luis Gutierrez

A female war correspondent so popular that she had some credibility in saying she controlled half of her newspaper's circulation approached General Winfield Scott during the Mexican War with information that could help him. He was unwilling to get help from someone in petticoats. ~ Harold Holzer

One of the most meaningful things that's happened to me since I've been the governor - the president - governor - president. Oops. Ex-governor. I went to Bethesda Naval Hospital to give a fellow a Purple Heart, and at the same moment I watched him-get a Purple Heart for action in Iraq - and at that same - right after I gave him the Purple Heart, he was sworn in as a citizen of the United States - a Mexican citizen, now a United States citizen. ~ George W. Bush

Sometimes just being an immigrant, I read things the wrong way, and that can be funny. Or I'll put the emphasis on the wrong word, and that can be funny. I have an affinity for comedy because I like to watch them. It's an honor to make comedies because I love being able to pop something into the DVD player and laugh. I love doing it. ~ John Cho

The 4th of July is what Americans the world over celebrate.
They celebrate the birth of their great country, and of removing the shackles off from their mother country.
They celebrate being immigrants in a new home.
They celebrate being Americans.
Immigrants the world over dream of becoming Americans.
Don't deny them the dream that your ancestors had, but grant them the freedom that you have. ~ Anthony T. Hincks

I certainly think so, and I argue so, and I give talks on that. Are there risks by putting people together? Absolutely. Is there value in the black church? Absolutely. Is there value in having immigrant churches? Absolutely. But if we don't have congregations gathering with people of different races, what we're doing is we are redefining racial division, a racial inequality. ~ Michael Emerson

Contrary to what you might assume, I didn't start with any advantages and neither did most of the successful people I know. I am the grandson of immigrants who came to this country seeking basic economic and personal liberty. ~ Kenneth Langone

Solidarity is something much more than mercy: usually when you appease your conscience (donate money to starving children in Africa, to use the usual Starbucks example), you can go on with your daily life as if nothing really happened. However, once you are enacting solidarity you can even abstain from charity or mercy: even if you don't give a dollar to every beggar, you can't go on with your daily life as if nothing really happened. Why? Because you carry him in your life; you live with him not like with some "integrated reject" (as we live with immigrants or refugees today), but he is a part and even a presupposition for your very action: he can never be fully integrated, because injustice can't be integrated in acts of love. This is why solidarity already contains love. ~ Srecko Horvat

The Malays were outstripped economically in their own country by the immigrant races. In the words of historian Lennox Mills, "when the British came, the Malay was a poor man in a poor country; when they left he was a poor man in a rich country." British attitudes and policies, what the Malays did for a living, the strengths of the immigrants and the nature of the Malay value system all contributed to their backward economic position. ~ Anonymous

Mexican style of boxing training is different from what my father had trained me. It was good for me because it was an added knowledge, an addition to my boxing IQ. ~ Tomoki Kameda

The bottom line is if the president [Barack Obama] really wants to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, maybe his Justice Department should stop releasing felons, many of which are illegal immigrants, only to the streets of America. ~ Katie Pavlich

The victims of right-wing violence are typically immigrants, Muslims, and people of color, while the targets of environmental and animal rights activism are among "the most powerful corporations on the planet" - hence the state's relative indifference to the one and obsession with the other.

The broader pattern helps to explain one partial exception to the left/right gap in official scrutiny - namely, the domestic aspects of the "War on Terror." Al Qaeda is clearly a reactionary organization. Like much of the American far right, it is theocratic, anti-Semitic, and patriarchal. Like Timothy McVeigh, the 9/11 hijackers attacked symbols of institutional power, killing a great many innocent people to further their cause. But while the state's bias favors the right over the left, the Islamists were the wrong kind of right-wing fanatic. These right-wing terrorists were foreigners, they were Muslim, and above all they were not white. And so, in retrospect and by comparison, the state's response to the Oklahoma City bombing seems relatively restrained - short-lived, focused, selectively targeting unlawful behavior for prosecution. The government's reaction to the September 11th attacks has been something else entirely - an open-ended war fought at home and abroad, using all variety of legal, illegal, and extra-legal military, police, and intelligence tactics, arbitrarily jailing large numbers of people and spying on entire communities of immigrants, Muslims, and Middle ~ Kristian Williams

I always tell people, 'Coming from such a big Mexican family when there's a new baby every three weeks, you have to do something to get someone's attention.' ~ Becky G

Only very rarely are foreigners or first-generation immigrants allowed to be nice people in American films. Those with an accent are bad guys. ~ Max Von Sydow

My dad's a beautiful man, but like a lot of Mexican men, or men in general, a lot of men have a problem with the balance of masculinity and femininity - intuition and compassion and tenderness - and get overboard with the macho thing. It took him a while to become more, I would say, conscious, evolved. ~ Carlos Santana

One of the strengths of this country has been our diversity. One of the strengths of this country has been the fact that we are a nation of immigrants. ~ Christine Todd Whitman

Conservatives aren't anti-immigrant - conservatives are pro-legal immigration. ~ Marco Rubio

The racism in Europe takes the form of anti-immigrant extremism - which is bad enough here - I think it's hard to measure, but my guess is that it's probably worse there. ~ Noam Chomsky

A characteristic thing about the aspiring immigrant is the fact that he is not content to progress alone. Solitary success is imperfect success in his eyes. He must take his family with him as he rises. ~ Mary Antin

All B.S. aside, it all comes down to ... we got to survive. I mean, even warriors put their spears down on Sundays. We got to survive here in this country ... 'cause I'm not going back to Africa. We got to survive here. And for us to survive here-White folks, Black folks, Korean folks, Mexican folks, Puerto Ricans-we got to understand each other. ~ Tupac Shakur

I can't imagine what this great country would be like if the Mexican Revolution hadn't happened. ~ Lionel Sosa

All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants; the public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. ~ William J. Clinton

I've been called a racist before, and let me tell you something - that is harsh. That's a really ugly thing to call someone. That's like being called a Mexican. ~ Bonnie McFarlane

Look at the immigrants coming to America looking for a better life. What they got now? If they had the misfortune to be successful one of the most gruesome cultural straightjackets in history. ~ William S. Burroughs

Many immigrant groups have faced hostility. The Irish did in their time. Jews did. Italians did - and now, Muslim immigrants. ~ Tom Gjelten

But lots of emerging racial tensions in California have nothing to do with whites: Filipinos and Samoans are fighting it out in San Francisco high schools. Merced is becoming majority Mexican and Cambodian. They may be fighting in gangs right now, but I bet they are also learning each other's language. ~ Richard Rodriguez

I'm here not just as an actress but as a woman, an African-American, a granddaughter of Ellis Island immigrants, a person who could not have afforded college without the help of student loans and as one of millions of volunteers working to re-elect President Obama! ~ Kerry Washington

That is another theme in the book [Dreams from My Father]. How do we exercise more empathy in our public discourse? How do we get the black to see through the eyes of the white? Or the citizen to see through the eyes of the immigrant? Or the straight to see through the eyes of the gay? That has always been a struggle in our politics. ~ Barack Obama