#migrant

I have seen them stagger out of their movie palaces and blink their empty eyes in the face of reality once more, and stagger home, to read the Times, to find out what's going on in the world. I have vomited at their newspapers, read their literature, observed their customs, eaten their food, desired their women, gaped at their art. But I am poor, and my name ends with a soft vowel, and they hate me and my father, and my father's father, and they would have my blood and put me down, but they are old now, dying in the sun and in the hot dust of the road, and I am young and full of hope and love for my country and my times, and when I say Greaser to you it is not my heart that speaks, but the quivering of an old wound, and I am ashamed of the terrible thing I have done. ↗

— John Fante

#american-literature #immigrant-experience #immigrants #art

An ocean could not explain the distance we have traveled. ↗

— Jonathan Safran Foer

#philosophical-reflection #experience

Every immigrant family, it seems, has someone who does not belong in the new country they have come to. It feels like permanent exile to that one brother or wife who cannot stand a silent fate in Boston or London or Melbourne. I’ve met many who remain haunted by the persistent ghost of an earlier place. ↗

— Michael Ondaatje

#experience

Will you keep this?" he asked, holding up the pendant. "Please. Don't show it to your folks. But keep it, please. I'm not asking for anything else. You're going away. God knows when I'll see you again. I can accept what you say about your feelings for me. I have to. But what harm will it do if you take this, and then at least, I'll know that something I got for you is with you. ↗

— Howard Fast

#the-immigrants #family

The dignity is in the worker, not in the job. ↗

— Howard Fast

#the-immigrants #family

I suppose I have cause you grief and misery at times, but I have never intentionally caused you embarrassment and discomfort. ↗

— Howard Fast

#the-immigrants #family

I am from there. I am from here. I am not there and I am not here. I have two names, which meet and part, and I have two languages. I forget which of them I dream in. ↗

— Mahmoud Darwish

#immigrants #dreams

Second-generation Hispanics marry non-Hispanics at a higher rate than second-generation Irish or Italians. Second-generation Hispanics' English language capability rates are higher than previous immigrant groups'. ↗

— Jeb Bush

#english #english language #groups #higher #hispanics

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people. ↗

— Noam Chomsky

#crime #fear #immigrants #increase #more

I think it's an enormous blessing to be the child of an immigrant who fled oppression, because you realize how fragile liberty is and how easily it can be taken away. ↗

— Ted Cruz

#because #blessing #child #easily #enormous