““Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.” ”

““Nihil humanum a me alienum puto, said the Roman poet Terence: ‘Nothing human is alien to me.’ The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.” ”

“Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity”

““In the final analysis, we are all migrants, armed with a temporary residence permit for this earth, each and every one of us incurably transient” ”

““There is something heroic in the way a migrant abandons his native land. Nevertheless, in his everyday life, he is fragile, confused, and at times ridiculous, like a card player who dreams of that one amazing trick but lacks essential knowledge of the rules of the game. He thought that he had arrived in a place where everything would be easy, where help would be at hand, where people would explain the rules to him, and not only that, would praise him if he managed to beat them. Now he discovers that his idols don’t give a damn about him; he discovers something worse; that no-one asked him to come, that he is there uninvited and nobody notices him. An invisible creature, which , on the rare occasions it is noticed, inspires either momentary pity or enduring disgust.””