#migrant

I wonder if my father, given the chance, would have wished to go back to the time before he made all that money, when he just had one store and we rented a tiny apartment in Queens. He worked hard and had worries but he had a joy then that he never seemed to regain once the money started coming in. He might turn on the radio and dance cheek to cheek with my mother. He worked on his car himself, a used green Impala with carburetor trouble. They had lots of Korean friends that they met in church and then even in the street, and when they talked in public there was a shared sense of how lucky they were, to be in America but still have countrymen near. ↗

— Chang-rae Lee

#korean #change

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

— Jonathan Safran Foer

#philosophical-reflection #experience

Either you get a chance to be a kid when you are a kid, or you don't grow up. ↗

— 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

The easiest way to hide a relationship is not to attempt to hide it. ↗

— Howard Fast

#the-immigrants #family

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

We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws. ↗

— Elton Gallegly

#immigrants #laws #nation

The Center for Immigration Studies found that illegal immigrants cost the United States taxpayer about $10.4 billion a year. A large part of that expense stems from the babies born each year to illegal immigrants. ↗

— Nathan Deal

#babies #billion #born #center #cost

The culture is going into a psychological depression. We are concerned about our place in the world, about being competitive: Will my children have as much as I have? Will I ever own my own home? How can I pay for a new car? Are immigrants taking away my white world? ↗

— James Hillman

#away #being #car #children #competitive

Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#inspiration #home