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.
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.
I'm an immigrant.
