Immigration quotes
532 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations And Religions; whom we shall wellcome to a participation of all our rights and previleges..."
"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities."
"Uncontrolled, mass immigration displaces British workers, forces people onto benefits, and suppresses wages for the low-paid."
"Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave."
"For our immigration policy to make sense, it is necessary to make distinctions between those who obey the law, and those who violate it."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside immigration — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Immigration is a good thing. We should make that as easy as possible."
"I started getting more and more active around immigration reform because this was such a waste of lives, such a waste of potential, such a waste for our country not to have the human capital that we developed - geared toward improving our entire society."
"One of the critical issues that we have to confront is illegal immigration, because this is a multi-headed Hydra that affects our economy, our health care, our health care, our education systems, our national security, and also our local criminality."
"One thing is very clear: Illegal immigrants are not entitled to benefits."
"But the simple truth is that we've lost control of our own borders, and no nation can do that and survive."
"Illegal immigrants in considerable numbers have become productive members of our society and are a basic part of our work force. Those who have established equities in the United States should be recognized and accorded legal status. At the same time, in so doing, we must not encourage illegal immigration."
"For one, we very much need in any immigration bill - we need protection for people who are in this country and who have not become citizens, for example, that they are protected and legitimized and given permanent residency here. And we want to see some things of that kind added to the immigration bill."
"It is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest."
"Any attempt to wriggle, especially from leadership candidates who campaigned to leave the EU by focusing on immigration, will be unacceptable to the public."
"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."
"The bigger the population gets, the more serious the problems become... We have to address the population issue. The United Nations, with the U.S. supporting it, took the position in Cairo in 1994 that every country was responsible for stabilizing its own population. It can be done. But in this country, it's phony to say 'I'm for the environment but not for limiting immigration.'"
"When it comes to immigration, I have actually put more money, under my administration, into border security than any other administration previously. We've got more security resources at the border - more National Guard, more border guards, you name it - than the previous administration. So we've ramped up significantly the issue of border security."
"I am not the 'illegal' you think I am, and immigration is not what you think it is."
"When you've seen prejudice, you understand that we aren't finished, that we're still perfecting this American experiment."
"We came to America, either ourselves or in the persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they had seen before, to get rid of the things that divide and to make sure of the things that unite."
"We're continuing to work to bring immigration down to the tens of thousands."
"Immigration policy should be generous; it should be fair; it should be flexible. With such a policy we can turn to the world, and to our own past, with clean hands and a clear conscience."
"A nation, like a tree, does not thrive well till it is engraffed with a foreign stock."
"We can certainly defuse the intensity of the anti-immigrant feeling if we can bring some reality to the discussion by showing that they are not using that many resources."
"We have never had the will to enforce the immigration laws. What you see is what you'll continue to get."
