quotations about illegal immigration
On the right, immigration opponents see hordes of illegal immigrants taking jobs away from Americans who desperately need them and consuming social services whose costs are borne by overburdened taxpayers. They see immigrants, both legal and illegal, refusing to shed their culture or to adopt American customs and speak English. They believe that illegal immigrants contribute heavily to crime, and they agonize over the inexplicable inability of the American government to secure our borders. They see immigrants voting in large numbers for Democrats who constantly expand the scope and cost of the welfare state. And they are profoundly skeptical, given past broken promises, that any grand compromise on immigration will ever result in stopping the flow of illegal immigrants.
JEB BUSH & CLINT BOLICK
Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution
Illegal immigrants are as much the victims of the smuggling trade as anyone, and the human price they pay just adds to the misery of the problem. Americans were aghast to hear of the 19 Mexicans who suffocated in a sealed container at a truck stop near Victoria, Texas, in May 2003, after being abandoned by their "guides." These kinds of deaths, though usually on a smaller scale, are not uncommon along the U.S.-Mexico border. Even illegal immigrants who pass safely into the United States often endure virtual slave-labor conditions. This "victimless" crime's first victims are the very people taking part.
ALAN ALLPORT & JOHN E. FERGUSON
Immigration Policy
The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Choke
It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.
ERIC HOFFER
New York Times Magazine, April 25, 1971
If our goal is to slow migration, then the best way to do so is to work for a more equitable global system. But slowing migration is an odd goal, if the real problem is global inequality.
AVIVA CHOMSKY
They Take Our Jobs!: And 20 Other Myths about Immigration
All human populations are in some sense immigrants. All hostility between different cultures in one place has an aspect of the classic immigrant grudge against the next boatload approaching the shore. To defend one’s home and fields and ancestral graves against invasion seems a right. But to claim unique possession – to compound the fact of settlement with the aspect of a landscape into an abstract of eternal and immutable ownership – is a joke.
NEAL ASCHERSON
Black Sea
Like other discriminatory legislation in our country's history, immigration laws define and differentiate legal status on the basis of arbitrary attributes. Immigration laws create unequal rights. People who break immigration laws don't cause harm or even potential harm (unlike, for example, drunk driving, which creates the potential for harm even if no accident occurs). Rather, people who break immigration laws do things that are perfectly legal for others, but denied to them--like crossing a border or, even more commonly, simply exist.
AVIVA CHOMSKY
They Take Our Jobs!: And 20 Other Myths about Immigration