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
I'm concerned about a lot of serious border issues. This book is about the border reality and the struggles of the undocumented worker.
Ana Castillo
No one disagrees that undocumented criminals should be deported.
Ana Kasparian
In states like California alone, the vast majority of undocumented immigrants contribute a great deal to society and the health of the economy.
As a society, we must not allow human rights abuses to go unnoticed and undocumented; it is a vital mission to fight ignorance of these tragic events.
Andy Dunn
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.
Barack Obama
It is Trump who plays with the tax code to pay no taxes; it is Trump whose Trump-brand products are made overseas by cheap labor; it is Trump who hires undocumented workers from Poland to work on his projects, then refuses to pay them minimum wages.
Bob Beckel
Very few undocumented workers come here to be unemployed.
I do not support amnesty. I do not support driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants.
Brian Sandoval
I do not support driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants.
If we are going to deport Dreamers, and if we are going to deport undocumented individuals, our economy is going to take a big hit. That is why businesses across the country and in Nevada support immigration reform, support Dreamers, and support passing immigration reform to keep undocumented individuals in our state.
Catherine Cortez-Masto
At the end of the day, it not only doesn't make logical sense to deny licenses to undocumented immigrants, it doesn't make financial sense.
Cheech Marin
I'll never understand how destroying families through deportation benefits our society. How we treat the undocumented says a great deal about us as a people and whether or not we'll continue to fulfill the fundamental American promise of equality and opportunity for all.
Conor Oberst
I think we should be pushing for amnesty and a path to citizenship for every undocumented person residing in the United States who has not committed a violent crime, with a special emphasis on keeping families together.
I went through depression, which is something that we don't often talk about when we look at undocumented communities and deported families.
Diane Guerrero
When you're the child of undocumented immigrants, you learn to keep your mouth shut.
I learned at a very young age that my parents were undocumented.
My father, who worked as a dishwasher, was especially anxious. He did not like being here undocumented.
The wise decision by President Obama to grant some undocumented immigrants the right to remain in the United States for two years without the threat of deportation is already benefitting the country.
Eliot Spitzer
In 2007, when I was governor of New York, I proposed that our state once again permit undocumented immigrants to obtain a driver's license. To say the proposal lit a firestorm in the political arena is an understatement.
My grandfather was an undocumented immigrant. My great-grandmother, my bisabuela, carried him over the border in her arms.
If the undocumented have to work hard to attain citizenship, those of us who already are citizens should have to work hard to sustain it. We should all have to serve more, vote more, build more, and do more for our country.
From the right, you get demagogues shouting about brown-skinned anchor babies and clamoring to deport the undocumented. From the left, you get advocacy for the oppressed but otherwise, when it comes to national civic identity, mainly silence.
For the undocumented immigrants, the big priority is just to get out from the shadows, be able to get a driver's license, buy an airplane ticket and stop worrying about sudden deportation. But for the country as a whole, it's crucial that everybody have a citizen's stake in the nation's welfare.
If immigration reform passes, it'll be a big victory for sanity - nobody really believes it's healthy for a country to have millions and millions of undocumented noncitizens living in the shadows. But it'll also be a sign that the Republican Party has gotten tired of letting the Tea Party push it around.
I want to help correct the inaccurate image of immigration in the media. There is an idea that women's issues are over here and immigration is over there. Three quarters of undocumented workers are women and children.
Obama set a record number of deportations of illegal immigrants in 2011, but that fact alone is misleading. Obama has spoken in favor of and has urged Congress to pass the DREAM Act, a bill that would allow young undocumented immigrants to stay in America, their home, and achieve citizenship by going to college or serving in the military.
I support comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to full and equal citizenship for undocumented immigrants who are playing by the rules, staying out of trouble and contributing to our economy.
I support DACA, which prevents the deportation of undocumented immigrants who came to America as children. Congress should cement this program into law by supporting the DREAM Act, which has overwhelming bipartisan support.
All across this country, undocumented immigrants are living in fear of seeing their families torn apart because of our broken immigration system. Many of those immigrants are children who were brought here at a young age through no fault of their own.
Our differences are what make us great. Let us think about how we can extend this appreciation to people of color, undocumented immigrants, and other members of the community.
In order to create real, long-lasting reform, we must create a pathway to legal status for the millions of undocumented immigrants who have made lives for themselves and their families in the United States.
Trump's characterization of undocumented immigrants is, of course, absurd. Not only do the facts, well, trump his assertions, but his prejudiced views demonstrate a deep ignorance about Mexican immigrants in the United States.
There used to be a tradition within the Hispanic community that, regardless of your political party, you would support undocumented immigrants. That ended with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.
Of all the questions I get asked as an undocumented immigrant in the United States, there are two - asked in various permutations via email, social media or in person - that chill me to the bone: 'Why don't you just make yourself legal?' And: 'Why don't you get in the back of the line?'
When you're undocumented, you're supposed to keep your head down and be quiet and pay taxes, social security - even though people don't know that we do those things - and not say anything.
The story of undocumented immigrants in this country is not just about undocumented immigrants. It's about the country as a whole, and it's about us being able to tell the truth about where we are with this issue because we haven't been telling the truth about where we are with this issue.
On the surface, I've created a good life. I've lived the American dream. But I am still an undocumented immigrant.
As a newcomer to America who learned to 'speak American' by watching movies, I firmly believe that to change the politics of immigration and citizenship, we must change culture - the way we portray undocumented people like me and our role in society.
There were many factors as to why I decided to come out as being undocumented. One of them is because I look the way that I look; I don't look like the 'stereotypical undocumented' person.
I'm a gay, undocumented immigrant; I have to be optimistic.
In Tagalog, we call undocumented people 'TNT,' which means tago ng tago, which means 'hiding and hiding.' So that's literally what undocumented means in Tagalog. And that kind of tells you how Filipinos think of this issue, and really any culture, right?
I am undoubtedly one of the more, if not the most, privileged undocumented immigrants in America. And for us at Define American, which is this culture campaign group that I founded with some friends, culture trumps politics.
The fact of the matter is, this country is not going to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. What are we supposed to do with them? What are we supposed to do with these kids?
To me, politics is culture. I became a journalist, and later a filmmaker, to get to know my new country and my volatile place in it as a gay, undocumented Filipino-American.
Undocumented people get arrested all the time. I get arrested, and it's front-page news. I feel guilt.
I remember the first article I ever wrote, and I saw my name in the paper, and I already knew I was undocumented, and I was thinking: 'How can they now say I don't exist?'
You know, I'm one of millions of undocumented people in this country who are living kind of under the shadows. And in many ways, coming out, it was my way of - at the end of the day, I think we have to tell the truth about this immigration system. And because of that, I had to tell the truth about myself.
Every single immigrant we have, undocumented or documented, is a future American. That's just the truth of it.
Congress has an obligation to make controversial decisions on how to handle undocumented immigration. Lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have refused to take the tough votes on the issue for decades. Whether it's been to take advantage of cheap labor or for political purposes, both sides are guilty.
