LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 19: Actress Zoe Saldana attends the 22nd Annual ELLE Women in Hollywood Awards at Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills on October 19, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images)
Zoe Saldana has a bit of advice for people who are wary of the growing Latin influence in the United States: Get used to it, because it’s not going away.
“Avatar” actress Saldana appears in the December 2015/January 2016 issue of Latina magazine, offering her thoughts on the ever-more-heated immigration debate.
Asked what she would say to people who are “scared by the Latinization of America,” the actress was blunt.
“You can’t kill us. You can’t send us back. We are millions and millions here because it is our time to migrate. We are the youngest culture. We are doing what your people did,” the actress, whose background includes Dominican and Puerto Rican lineage, said. “So shut up and just deal with it. Adjust your laws, because it’s not going away.”
The actress did, however, allow some measure of sympathy for the anti-immigration crowd.
“If anything, I want to give them a hug, and say, “It’s OK. It’s new. Don’t be scared. We’re great people. We’re gonna do great and better things for your country. Trust me,'” Saldana continued. “We’re not angry either. We’re a culture that isn’t angry.”
In the interview, Saldana compared Latino immigrants to previous waves of immigrants.
“The only true American here is the Native American. Everyone else is a transplant. We’re going through the exact same thing the Italians went through, the Irish, the Jews and the Asians,” she said. “In different ways, but it’s been very similar.”
21 Times Hollywood Tackled Race Issues (Photos)
Selma (2014) - David Oyelowo plays civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in a biopic that explores the civil rights leader's role in the 1965 Selma protests.
Harpo Films/ Plan B Entertainment
Dear White People (2014) - This biting satire follows four black college students making their way in "post-racial" America.
Homegrown Pictures
12 Years a Slave (2013) - Chiwetel Ejiofor led the 2014 Best Picture winner, which is a true story about a freeborn black man who spent over a decade in slavery in the pre-Civil War South.
Fox
Django Unchained (2012) - Quentin Tarantino's controversial Oscar winner follows a freed slave who fights to liberate his wife from a brutal plantation owner.
The Weinstein Co.
Gran Torino (2008) - Clint Eastwood plays a grizzled Korean War veteran who reluctantly takes his young Hmong neighbor under his wing.
Warner Bros.
Crash (2004) - 2006's Best Picture Winner traces the intersecting lives of people of different races in present day Los Angeles.
Bob Yari Productions
American History X (1998) - Edward Norton plays the leader of a violent neo-Nazi gang who reevaluates his life when he sees his little brother going down the same path.
New Line
A Time to Kill (1996) - Based on the best-selling John Grisham novel, Samuel L. Jackson plays a man on trial for murdering the two white supremacists who raped his daughter who turns to an untested lawyer played by Matthew McConaughey.
Warner Bros.
Schindler's List (1993) - Steven Spielberg's unflinching look at the Holocaust through the eyes of a man who saved thousands of Polish Jews.
Universal
Malcolm X (1992) - Spike Lee and Denzel Washington teamed up for the true story of the inflammatory Nation of Islam leader.
Warner Bros.
School Ties (1992) - Brendan Fraser led this all-star cast (which included Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) in which he played tbe only Jewish student at an exclusive 1950's prep school.
Paramount
Boyz n the Hood (1991) - John Singleton's hard-hitting look at life in South Central Los Angeles saw Cuba Gooding Jr. trying to avoid the pitfalls of life in the ghetto.
Columbia Pictures
Dances with Wolves (1990) - Kevin Costner won multiple Oscars for this tale of a Civil War soldier who comes to identify with an oppressed native tribe in the American West.
Orion Pictures
Do the Right Thing (1989) - Spike Lee's searing portrait of a day in the life of a mostly black Brooklyn neighborhood during an intense heat wave.
Universal
Mississippi Burning (1988) - The true story of the disappearance of three civil rights protesters in 1960's Mississippi and the FBI agents who investigated.
Orion Pictures
The Color Purple (1985) - Whoopi Goldberg was nominated for Best Actress in this story of a black woman at the turn of the century fighting for her place in society.
Amblin
Blazing Saddles (1974) - Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor collaborated on this hysterical look at a black sheriff taking charge of a frontier town.
Warner Bros.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) - Sidney Poitier stars in this groundbreaking film about a white woman who brings her black fiancee home to meet her parents.
Columbia Pictures
In the Heat of the Night (1967) - Sidney Poitier again challenged conventions when he portrayed a black detective investigating a murder in a rural Southern town.
United Artists
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) - Gregory Peck cemented his place in film history as Atticus Finch, a white lawyer defending a black man accused of rape, in the adaptation of Harper Lee's masterpiece.
Universal
Birth of a Nation (1915) - Considered the first true narrative film, it attracted widespread criticism for its portrayal of African Americans and its glorification of the KKK.
D.W. Griffith
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The film industry has never shied away from the controversial topic
Selma (2014) - David Oyelowo plays civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in a biopic that explores the civil rights leader's role in the 1965 Selma protests.