This Is What Famous Latinos Have To Say About Immigration

"We may be afraid, but we are united and we are tough."

Gina Rodriguez, actress

Emma Mcintyre / Getty Images

"We need to keep families together and not in detention homes," Rodriguez said during the Time 100 gala. "The fact that it's even called that makes you feel uncomfortable knowing that there's no care for people as human beings."

Diego Luna, actor

Stuart C. Wilson / Getty Images

“Este viaje no es nuevo, ni es sólo mío; es el viaje de millones que, como yo, esperan algo más. Luchemos juntos por lo que puede ser, porque creo en este gran país y que está listo para mí," he said in a powerful ad he directed.

"This journey is not new, and it's not only mine; it's the journey of millions like myself, who hope for something more. We fight together for what can be, because I believe this great country is ready for me."

America Ferrera, actress

Theo Wargo / Getty Images

"We will not turn our backs on the more than 750,000 young immigrants in this country currently protected by DACA," Ferrera said to marchers at the Women's March. "They are hard-working, upstanding, courageous indviduals who refuse to live in the shadow of fear and isolation. They bravely took to the streets to declare themselves and to provide a voice and hope for their community."

Diane Guerrero, actress and author

Christopher Polk / Getty Images

"My message to the nativists is this: We are not going anywhere," Guerrero wrote on Vice's Broadly blog. We are here to stay and we are ready to fight back. We may be afraid, but we are united and we are tough."

Lin-Manuel Miranda, playwright, actor, musician

Theo Wargo / Getty Images

"In a year when politicians traffic in anti-immigrant rhetoric, there is also a Broadway musical reminding us that a broke, orphan immigrant from the West Indies built our financial system," Miranda told students at the University of Pennsylvania. "A story that reminds us that since the beginning of the great, unfinished symphony that is our American experiment, time and time again, immigrants get the job done."

Prince Royce, musician

Brad Barket / Getty Images

"My parents were immigrants and they were fortunate to come and they became citizens," he told The Huffington Post. "I’ve always looked at my parents as very positive role models. They didn’t come here to do crime, they didn’t come here to do negative things...When I think about immigration I think about my own family."

Jorge Ramos, journalist and author

Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP / Getty Images

"You know exactly what to do," Ramos wrote in an essay to immigrants. "Be bold. Don’t sit down. Don’t shut up. Don’t be a victim; change the rules of the game. And don’t go anywhere else. This is where you belong. Finally, let me just say that I would be very proud to be part of your family. And if I can ask something from you, it would be to let me dream with you."

Gael García Bernal, actor

Matthew Eisman / Getty Images

"We’ve come to this point in the world right now where we’re talking about the issue of migration in the most idiotic way,” he told Time. “We have to talk about this issue in a comprehensive, much more benign and understanding way. It is a phenomenon that will always happen, and we need to establish ways to not criminalize this phenomenon.”

Dascha Polanco, actress

Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images

"I am an immigrant," she told the Latin Post. "I am proud of being an immigrant and coming into this country and not being a statistic, but overcoming what the statistic may have been and being the best at what I put my mind to."

Wilmer Valderrama, actor

Christopher Polk / Getty Images

"My parents sold everything they had...this isn't a story that is foreign to many of us....It is the blueprint of this country, which is the story of an immigrant," he said during the Looking Ahead awards. "As far and as long as this country has memory...every single one of us, have to come to this country and laid a brick that made the foundation of this country, and I am proud to be part of that heritage."

Camila Cabello, musician

Jonathan Leibson / Getty Images

"This country was built on immigrants," she wrote in a essay for PopSugar Latina. "People who were brave enough to start over....We are not fearless, we just have dreams bigger than our fears...And so next time, when anybody wants to tell you they want to build a 'wall' on our border, remember behind that wall is struggle, determination, hunger."

Pitbull, musician

Kevin Winter / Getty Images

"When it comes to immigration laws in the United States of America, I think that it's very contradicting to everything that this beautiful country stands for," he told CNN. "This is a country that's been built by immigrants...If we start pushing people out or not allowing them in or not allowing them to indulge in at least feeling what it's like to have freedom and maybe in their own way to live out the American dream, I think it's very contradicting to everything that the Constitution stands for."

Salma Hayek, actress

Stuart C. Wilson / Getty Images

"Of all these things that are going on, what surprises me the most is the lack of humanity with which immigrants are being treated," she told V Magazine. "What saddens me is how the United States—which has always been considered a global hero that helps other countries—doesn't help people from other lands who come to their country, that is contradictory."

Sandra Cisneros, author

Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images

"Well, when you’re an immigrant writer, or an immigrant, you’re not always welcome to this country unless you’re the right immigrant," she told PBS. "...So, even though I was born in the United States, I never felt at home in the United States. I never felt at home until I moved to the Southwest, where, you know, there’s a mix of my culture with the U.S. culture, and that was why I lived in Texas for 25 years."

Gloria Estefan, musician

Ben Hider / Getty Images

"We join with you today so that they will know that we immigrants are honest, workers, to show the beautiful face that we bring to this country, always respecting the laws," she said during a May Day demonstration. "If everyone looks back, everyone is an immigrant in this country."

José Fernández, athlete

Hannah Foslien / Getty Images

“I look up and I just close my eyes and I thank to God—thank to God that I made it, and that I’m here, and that I’m free,’” he said in an interview with Fox Sports. “This country is the best country in the world, and it’s made out of immigrants.”

Junot Díaz, author

Andrew Toth / Getty Images

"I mean, the solitude of being an immigrant, the solitude of having to learn a language and a culture from scrap, led me to the need for some sort of explanation, the need for answers, the need for something that would give me – that would in some ways shelter me, led me to books, man," Diaz told NPR. "You know, I just – I found books – when they’d showed me the library when I was a kid, a light went off at me in every cell of my body. Books became the map with which I navigated this new world."

George Lopez, actor, comedian

Mike Coppola / Getty Images

"I’ll tell you this, my grandfather worked very hard. People come from other countries...and they come to America for a better life," Lopez told a fan on HuffPost Live. "That better life is challenged now because we hire the people to do the work, and to raise the kids, and to clean the hotels, and to clean the office buildings but then turn a blind eye to what they want and they need.”