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Undocumented Workers Quotes

Browse 23 quotes about Undocumented Workers.

Undocumented Workers Quotes

“I'm attending a monthly meeting at Colectiva Por Fin on my first night on Staten Island. The room is small but as more men come in, it seems to double and triple in size. On the wall, migrants are celebrated through art that strikes me as deeply annoying, mostly the word "migrant" reconfigured as butterflies. I fucking hate thinking of migrants as butterflies. Butterflies can't fuck a bitch up.”

ButterfliesMigrantsUndocumented ImmigrantsUndocumented WorkersUndocumentedDay Laborers
Book:The Undocumented Americans
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“If we make a union in these fields, is there anything we can do to ensure it doesn't become corrupt? Or that later it doesn't only look after the people who work here, we just look after our own, and everyone else can fend for themselves? We need to fight for ourselves, here and now, but we also need changes so large and impossible they encompass the entire world.”

RevolutionAbuse Of PowerClass WarUndocumented WorkersUnion Busting
Book:Rich and Poor
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“Before visiting Staten Island, I'd never met a day laborer. To me, a city girl who knew undocumented men mostly as restaurant workers, day laborers seemed like an almost mythical archetype, groups of brown men huddled at the crack of dawn on street corners next to truck rental lots and hardware superstores and lumberyards. Historically, legislators and immigration advocates have parted the sea of the undocumented with a splintered staff—working brown men and women on one side and academically achieving young brown people on the other, one a parasitic blight, the other heroic dreamers.”

ImmigrantsLaborersDreamersUndocumented ImmigrantsUndocumented WorkersUndocumentedDay Laborers
Book:The Undocumented Americans
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“Again, this week as I walked on Broadway, in front of giant photographs of voluptuous supermodels at a Victoria Secret mega-store, who was rebuilding the sidewalks? With sweaty headbands, ripped-up jeans, and dust on their brown faces? Their muscled hands quivered as they worked the jack-hammers and lugged the concrete chunks into dump trucks. Two men from Guanajuato. Undocumented workers. They both shook my hand vigorously, as if they were relieved I wasn’t an INS officer. I imagined how much money Victoria Secret was making off these poor bastards. I wondered why passersby didn’t see what was in front of their faces. We use these workers. We profit from them. In the shadows, they work to the bone, for pennies. And it’s so easy to blame them for everything and nothing simply because they are powerless, and dark-skinned,and speak with funny accents. Illegal is illegal. It is a phrase, shallow and cruel, that should prompt any decent American to burn with anger.”

ImmigrantsLatinoHispanicIllegal ImmigrationImmigrant ExperienceChicanoSergio TroncosoUndocumented WorkersImmigrant Values
Book:Crossing Borders: Personal Essays
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“Here in California, a few years ago voters passed an initiative intended to prevent illegal aliens from using our schools and hospitals. The courts have so far prevented this fantastically stupid law from being enforced, but what bothers me is, a majority of voting Californians thought it would be a really good idea to share our state with large numbers of sick, uneducated people. Of course, the true goal was to force the illegals out, but as long as there are jobs here--even dirty, ill-paid, dangerous jobs--needy people from other countries will come here. Best they maintain their health, and in doing so, maintain the public health. And best their children go to school and become the educated Americans that the country will need for a positive future.”

EducationCaliforniaHealthcareIllegal AliensUndocumented WorkersSocial Services
Author:Octavia E. Butler
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“All of us take offense to anyone who reaps the rewards of living in America without taking on the responsibilities of living in America. And undocumented immigrants who desperately want to embrace those responsibilities see little option but to remain in the shadows, or risk their families being torn apart.”

WantLittlesAmericaResponsibilityRiskShadowEmbraceRewardsImmigrantsOffenseTornReapTorn ApartUndocumented ImmigrantsUndocumented Workers
Author:Barack Obama
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“When you have a candidate like Donald Trump saying that Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers, and also doubling down and suggesting that we should deport 11 million undocumented workers, who are mostly people that came to this country to better themselves, and to patrol neighborhoods of predominantly Muslims families. This shows you how deeply held those feelings really are in our country and that the Republicans have absolutely no interest in helping minorities.”

PeopleShouldCountryHelpingShowsFeelingsInterestMillionsTrumpRepublicanDrugDown AndWorkersOur CountryCandidatesMinoritiesNeighborhoodDealerSuggestingDrug DealersUndocumented WorkersMuslim Family
Author:Debbie Wasserman Schultz
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“I said to one young activist who herself was the daughter of an undocumented worker, and so could speak from a very personal and legitimate perspective - I remember saying to her: I agree with you, from a moral perspective, that a child from Honduras is worth the same as my daughter. God is not a respecter of boundaries; he's not saying that American kids deserve a better life than Honduran kids. But I'm the president of the United States, and the nation-state by definition means that boundaries mean something and borders mean something.”

MeanChildrenSaidStatesKidsRememberYoungSpeakNationsPresidentUnitedMoralUnited StatesPerspectiveDaughterDeserveAgreeWorkersDefinitionsBoundariesBordersMy DaughterActivistBetter LifeHondurasUndocumented Workers
Author:Barack Obama
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“One thing I think we have to do is to make sure that the undocumented workers who are living in America today, that they have to take responsibility. They've got to register, pay a fine, pay their back taxes, learn English and then get on a pathway in which they could have the prospect of being here legally.”

ThinkingTodayAmericaPayResponsibilityOne ThingFineTaxesWorkersTaking ResponsibilityPathwaysRegisterAmerica TodayUndocumented Workers
Author:Barack Obama
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“I know firsthand that many employers who comply with other labor standards still hire the undocumented. Many businesses pay the minimum wage and have barely tolerable working conditions because there are sufficient undocumented workers willing to accept those terms. If we care about low-income workers in this country, we need to create pressure to improve their economic condition by reducing the supply of unauthorized workers.”

IfsKnowsNeedsStillsCountryCareTermPayAcceptingEconomicConditionsWillingLowsStandardsLaborPressureWorkersImmigrationIncomeSufficientMinimumEmployersReducingMinimum WageTolerableLow IncomeWorking ConditionsUndocumented Workers
Author:Maria Echaveste
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“Most analysts would agree that if all the undocumented immigrants in California were deported in one day, our state would experience a severe economic downturn. This does not even consider the many cultural and spiritual gifts these immigrants bring to our state and nation.”

IfsDoeStatesSpiritualNationsEconomicOne DayAgreeCaliforniaImmigrantsFierceSevereAnalystsSpiritual GiftsDownturnUndocumented ImmigrantsEconomic DownturnUndocumented Workers
Author:Roger Mahony
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