I'm the daughter of two Indian immigrant doctors, and I have an older sister and younger brother, and none of us have pursued medicine as a career. We're all over the artistic side of things.
Aarti Mann
By the time I was 16, I was someone to reckon with. I was so eager to repudiate any connection with any immigrant race, I would go above and beyond. I was desperate to belong to something. That was my drive as a teenager.
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
Immigrants play a huge role in the founding and value creation of today's tech companies. We wonder how much more value could be created if it were easier to get a work visa.
Aileen Lee
I'm a first-born child of a Chinese immigrant family, I grew up on the East Coast. And I have to admit, I did not grow up around technology.
So I've got mates I've known since I was five years old. Their children know my children. There's something really lovely about it. When you're an immigrant - my parents were immigrants, their brothers and sisters lived all over the world, Florida, Jamaica, some in Europe - it's a grounding thing. That community is critical.
Ainsley Harriott
Although my family is originally from Jamaica, I grew up in a diverse community in south London. As my parents were immigrants they made every effort to integrate and we used to go to a wonderful church where we befriended families from all over the world.
I think immigrants, when they're stressed, think that there's something wrong with America, when it's really just difficult to leave a country and all that you know.
Akhil Sharma
We are all human beings, immigrant or non-immigrant. We all feel fear. We all love and become confused when we don't act as well as we would like to. We all get depressed and have feelings of uselessness. All of these things are true and have always been true.
What motivated me? My mother. My mother was an immigrant woman, a peasant woman, struggled all her life, worked in the garment center.
Al Lewis
Countries around the world have their own immigration laws and methods of dealing with a recurring theme: desperate people searching for peace from volatile parts of the world. And nations everywhere thrive and prosper from the contributions of immigrants and the children of immigrants - including right here in the U.S.
Al Sharpton
Sometimes my biography is interpreted as the upbringing of a French aristocrat. It was very, very different. We were a family of mercantile, immigrant Jews.
Alain de Botton
To our American neighbors, we were model immigrants, a poster family. They told us so. My father had a law degree, my mother was on her way to becoming a doctor, and my siblings and I got good grades and always said 'please' and 'thank you.'
Alex Tizon
The privilege of serving my country is not only rooted in my military service, but also in my personal history. I sit here, as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army, an immigrant.
Alexander Vindman
We like to make the distinction between immigrants we want and immigrants we don't want. They all share one thing, and that's the work ethic.
Alexandra C. Pelosi
Everyone talks about immigrants taking jobs, but there are a lot of jobs that America needs.
My grandfather was from outside of Moscow, and my grandmother, although some of her family were French, was from Odessa. They met as immigrants in New York in the early '20s. My mother's family came over from Ireland generations ago.
Alexis Denisof
On my father's side, I'm descended from immigrants, one of whom was a Syrian refugee from the Armenian genocide, and my mother was an immigrant from Germany whose visa had expired and, for a year and change, was undocumented here in the U.S.
Alexis Ohanian
As an immigrant, my wish is that we fix immigration. At Sequoia, we've backed a number of exceptional founders that were born abroad but started their careers in the Valley. They've created immense value, but more importantly, massive numbers of jobs locally, nationally and globally.
Alfred Lin
For immigrant generations especially, family is the first structure, or shelter, for a people who are in exile.
Alice McDermott
I think everyone is kind of an immigrant somehow, and I wasn't raised in an American society at home. My household was a Jamaican household, so I got all my traditions, all my roots and culture intact, so I'm able to support both countries.
Aljamain Sterling
In my immigrant family we revered Margaret Thatcher. She was aspiration personified. She understood what it took to smash the glass ceiling. She shared our values and she empathised with our experiences. She really was the first British Asian Prime Minister.
If you aspired and wanted to get on in life, as so many immigrants families did, Margaret Thatcher was your champion, your role model, your heroine.
I grew up in northwest London on a council estate. My parents are Irish immigrants who came over here when they were very young and worked in menial jobs all their lives, and I'm one of many siblings.
Our nation is built upon a history of immigration, dating back to our first pioneers, the Pilgrims. For more than three centuries, we have welcomed generations of immigrants to our melting pot of hyphenated America: British-Americans; Italian-Americans; Irish-Americans; Jewish-Americans; Mexican-Americans; Chinese-Americans; Indian-Americans.
I hope I'll have the opportunity to debate how we reform and update our immigration system. I will relate my own story and that of the countless immigrants whose American Dream stories have helped build our country into the greatest nation in the world.
My parents are immigrants to this country. They came to this country for a better opportunity just like everyone else.
My grandfather on my dad's side was the first in our family to settle in the U.K. He came from Pakistan on his own in the '60s and worked in a cotton mill in Bolton, earning enough to bring over the rest of his family. My dad, Shah, was only about eight when he came to this country. Like most immigrants, he has a fierce work ethic.
The illegal immigrants are like termites. They are eating the grain that should go to the poor; they are taking our jobs.
Bangladeshi illegal immigrants are a threat to the security of this nation.
Each employed immigrant has his or her place of work. It is only the taxi driver, forever moving on wheels, who occupies no fixed space. He represents the immigrant condition.
In the poetry of immigrants, nostalgia is as common as confetti at parades or platitudes at political conventions.
People tend to forget that in our country, we'd pretty much all be immigrants, except for the Native Americans.
I was raised, myself, by extremely strict but also extremely loving Chinese immigrant parents. To this day, I believe that their having high expectations for me, coupled with love, was the greatest gift that anyone's ever given me. And so that's why, even though my husband is not Chinese, I try to raise my own two daughters the same way.
Once you get to the Enlightenment, the way that powers get to be hyperpowers isn't just by conquest. It's through commerce and innovation. Societies like the Dutch Republic and the United States used tolerance to become a magnet for enterprising immigrants.
I was the one that in a very overconfident immigrant way thought I knew exactly how to raise my kids. My husband was much more typical. He had a lot of anxiety; he didn't think he knew all the right choices. And, I was the one willing to put in the hours.
I think the biggest difference is that I've noticed Western parents seem much more concerned about their children's psyches, their self-esteem, whereas tough immigrant parents assume strength rather than fragility in their children and therefore behave completely differently.
I was raised by extremely strict - but also extremely loving - Chinese immigrant parents, and I had the most wonderful childhood! I remember laughing constantly with my parents - my dad is a real character and very funny. I certainly did wish they allowed to me do more things!
I saw my parents come over. They were immigrants, they had no money. My dad wore the same pair of shoes, I had some ugly clothes growing up, and I never had any privileges. In some ways, I think the person that I am now, I think it's good that I had that kind of tough upbringing.
China cannot pull in the best and brightest from all over the world. It's an ethnically defined nation, the opposite of an immigrant nation. You don't see a lot of American engineers trying to be Chinese citizens.
In states like California alone, the vast majority of undocumented immigrants contribute a great deal to society and the health of the economy.
Why am I a liberal? Because I don't forget that I'm an immigrant and that I'm a Hispanic and that I have a Latin accent when I speak English, and I want to defend those who get racially profiled by people who would discriminate against us?
I'm a son of immigrants. I'm not going to reduce my commitment to immigration. But can I empathize with the fact that if your town was 95 percent all white and now it's down to 60, that that can scare you? Can I empathize with that? Yeah.
There are a lot of things that immigrants, especially Chinese-Americans, want to share with their children, but there are a lot of things they don't want to share.
Brazil's got everything to be a great country for Brazilians and for immigrants.
It has given me a global vantage point, being the daughter of immigrants from China, who had nothing when they came here. And now I am leading a company. It speaks to something deep in me, the concept that you don't have to start with anything.
The Conservative party under my leadership will continue to be an inclusive, welcoming party that welcomes not only immigrants but also refugees and ensures that Canada plays its role in welcoming people from difficult situations.
I never thought I'd run for president. My parents were immigrants to this country - and leader of the free world was not on the list of careers presented to me as a skinny Asian kid growing up in upstate New York.
I'm an entrepreneur trying to let the American people know that it's not immigrants that are causing economic problems, it is the fact that our economy is advancing in ways that is making human labor less and less essential.
We need to wake up to the fact that it is not immigrants who are causing economic dislocations. It is technology and an evolving economy that is pushing more and more Americans to the sidelines.
I can't tell you how many times I get into a taxicab in New York or Los Angeles, and I'm talking to somebody who is a recent immigrant who was a doctor or lawyer or engineer or professor in the country they just came from. They're starting over again in life, and I think the majority of people out there can relate to that.
