7 Fun Movies About Immigration

Over the years, dozens of filmmakers have turned to the subject of immigration as a source of inspiration. When many people think of movies about immigration, they think of serious films — dramas where refugees are forced to make new lives for themselves, or immigrants coming to the US only to find that the American Dream is hard to obtain.

However, there are several films that don’t focus on the hardships of immigration, but instead use immigration to inject some levity into the story! Not all movies about immigration have to be serious — here are seven that are funny, romantic and sometimes unexpectedly poignant:

1) Coming to America

This 1988 comedy tells the story of Prince Akeem, heir to the throne of fictional African country Zamunda, who emigrates to the US in search of a bride after his parents set him up with a disastrous arranged marriage. Eddie Murphy plays Prince Akeem, who, with his best friend Semmi (Arsenio Hall) end up in Queens, New York — after all, “what better place to find a queen?”

As new American immigrants, Akeem and Semmi struggle to find work and end up working at McDowell’s, a fast-food restaurant blatantly copying McDonald’s, after passing themselves off as students. But the work situation works out for Akeem — he ends up falling in love with the restaurant owner’s daughter.

2) Green Card

This romantic comedy, made in 1990, revolves around the story of a sham marriage. Gérard Depardieu plays Georges Fauré, a French waiter who needs a green card to stay in America. Luckily for him, Brontë Mitchell (Andie MacDowell) agrees to marry him so that she can live in the apartment of her dreams, which is only available to married tenants.

The couple is horribly mismatched, but as they try to convince USCIS officers that their marriage is real, they begin to fall in love.

3) The Proposal

This 2009 romantic comedy with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds follows a similar storyline as “Green Card.” Margaret Tate, the executive editor-in-chief of a New York-based book publishing company, finds out she’s about to sent back to her home country of Canada. To avoid deportation, she forces her assistant, the put-upon Andrew Paxton, to marry her for a green card.

When Andrew takes Margaret to meet his family in Alaska, they realize how wrong — then maybe how right — they could actually be together.

4) French Kiss

This 1995 romantic comedy doesn’t have anyone marrying for a green card — instead, fastidious Kate (Meg Ryan) is planning to emigrate from the US to Canada when she marries her fiancé Charlie (Timothy Hutton), a doctor from Toronto.

Her plans go awry when Charlie calls Kate from a business trip in France to tell her he’s met someone else. When Kate goes to France to get her fiancé back, she connects with a wily Frenchman named Luc, then suddenly finds herself on a wild adventure involving lost passports, stolen goods and sneaky lovers.

5) Men in Black

While this 1997 Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones vehicle seems little more than a silly film about secret agents keeping aliens from outer space under wraps in New York City, many people actually consider this a movie about immigration.

The message? A nation can benefit from immigration — the MIB is run on funds from “alien inventions,” like velcro and liposuction — but it can also cause problems, which should be handled by capable, no-nonsense agents.

6) The Terminal

This 2004 movie about immigration by Steven Spielberg stars Tom Hanks as Viktor Navorski, a man from Krakozhia, a fictional Eastern European country. During his flight to America, the Krakozhian government was overthrown, rendering Viktor’s passport invalid.

Unable to legally enter the US or get a flight back to his war-torn home, Viktor sets up camp in an under-construction terminal of New York’s JFK airport. He learns to avoid a Customs and Border Patrol officer (Stanley Tucci) while striking up a romance with a flight attendant (Catherine Zeta-Jones) who eventually helps him find his way home.

7) Spanglish

This 2004 movie about immigration and assimilation tells the story of Flor Moreno and her daughter Cristina (Paz Vega and Shelbie Bruce) who come to the United States from Mexico to make better lives for themselves. Flor gets a job working as a housekeeper for the Claskys, a wealthy but dysfunctional Los Angeles family.

When Flor struggles with the language barrier, develops feelings for kind patriarch John Clasky and sees her daughter being doted on by the insecure Deborah Clasky, she realizes she must help choose the right path for her daughter.