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Immigration Experience Quotes

Browse 16 quotes about Immigration Experience.

Immigration Experience Quotes

“In Sri Lanka, when two strangers meet, they ask a series of questions that reveal family, ancestral village, and blood ties until they arrive at a common friend or relative. Then they say, "Those are our people, so you are our people." It's a small place. Everyone knows everyone. "But in America, there are no such namings; it is possible to slip and slide here. It is possible to get lost in the nameless multitudes. There are no ropes binding one, holding one to the earth. Unbound by place or name, one is aware that it is possible to drift out into the atmosphere and beyond that, into the solitary darkness where there is no oxygen.”

CommunityFamilyRespectFamily RelationshipsAncestryDisplacementSri LankaImmigration Experience
Book:What Lies Between Us
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“In no time at all after I moved, I was overcome by the enormity of my abandonment, like someone weeping in a crowd. I was astonished by the sudden surge of loneliness and terror I felt when I realized how stranded I was in this hostile place, that I did not know how to speak to people and win them over to me,that the bank, the canteen, the supermarket, the dark streets seemed so intimidating, and that I could not return from where I came – that, as I then thought, I had lost everything. Then Emma came and filled my life. I can’t describe that.”

LossLonelinessIsolationBelongingAbandonmentImmigration Experience
Book:Admiring Silence
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“And in all the political debates about immigration that have been raging across this country, amid all the easy, glib rhetoric about America being a nation of immigrants, this loss, this toll, this terrible giving up, often goes unmentioned. The popular media focuses on what is gained: freedom, liberty, material wealth, opportunity, independence, the ability to recreate yourself. But here's what is lost: identity, language, family, lovers, friends, pets, routines, hobbies, the names of streets you grew up on, the rhythms of your old neighborhood, your favorite family foods, the color of the sky at dusk. Sometimes, even your name.”

LossLoss Of LoveImmigration Experience
Book:If Today Be Sweet
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“At the different stages of recognition, reflection, and redress, practicing compassion provides potentially world-saving opportunities which otherwise likely would not exist.”

CompassionGraceMeditationWisdom QuotesDiversityMindfulnessRecognitionProblem SolvingLeadership DevelopmentHumanity And SocietyCoexistenceHuman PotentialLeadership StylesSustainable LivingFaith In HumanityReflection On LifeStrategic LeadershipNonviolent Conflict ResolutionSaving The WorldCompassionate LeadershipImmigration IssuesPostered Poetics By AberjhaniImmigration ExperienceOpportunities And PossibilitiesTeaching DiversityLeadership StrategiesLeadership TheoryCompassion Saves LivesExtistencePracticing PeaceAccountable LeadershipLeadership TheoriesPracticing CompassionPracticing DemocracyPracticing WisdomAccountable CompassionOpportunities To LoveStrategic Problems Solving
Book:Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.
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“You fooled us. Render your work, not your lives. This seems like the newest answer to an old question. Cheap muscle and blood to build you an Empire- that we can't stay in. Gran's gone missing from Saturday morning. Brixton Market? No one is frowning at the quality of the yams, or asking how the snapper's eye so cloudy. There'll be no Saturday soup tonight.”

BritainEmpireDeportationImmigration ExperienceRacism In BritainBrixtonEnoch PowellRacism In CanadaCitizen IWindrush
Book:A Portable Paradise
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“I believe we have reached a point where those of us who belong to this culture of la frontera in Ysleta and El Paso are not content to sit back and watch others tell us who we are. We know who we are, and we ourselves can tell others about what we love and what we fear and what we hate and what can save us. I believe our community has developed that confidence to step forward and start taking responsibility for the many images that are projected in the name of Ysleta and El Paso.”

Mexican AmericanBorderChicanoSergio TroncosoImmigration ExperienceMexican AmericansBorderlandsImmigrant ValuesChicanosEl Paso Texas
Book:Crossing Borders: Personal Essays
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“While one lives in a foreign country, language's main function is as a means of self-protection and a weapon in one's fight with the world. You can't fight without a weapon. But perhaps its human instinct that makes it even more imperative to somehow express oneself, convey meaning, connect with others.”

CultureFriendshipLossIsolationLanguage LearningWords Have PowerSelf ProtectionExpressing YourselfImmigration ExperienceHuman Instinct
Book:Farewell, My Orange
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“The truth is, I do have a chance to fight for something in the place I came from. Something akin to what I continue to fight and hope for in America. Something bigger than myself. And yet, I stay. It's a decision I continue to make, one that continues to haunt me. And even if it is a choice, there's no weight in it. It's meaningless apart from selfish intent.”

AmericaPoliticsActivismSelfishnessAmerican DreamImmigration Experience
Book:Socialist Realism
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