Ross: Statue of Liberty poem gives me an immigration idea
Aug 15, 2019, 7:20 AM | Updated: Aug 21, 2019, 5:33 am
The famous poem that’s bolted to the Statue of Liberty has again been pulled into the immigration debate.
This week, Ken Cuccinelli, acting head of immigration services, shared his version of the poem.
“Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet, and will not become a public charge,” he told a reporter this week.
Of course the original poem doesn’t include the “stand on their own two feet” part.
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But the fact is, past U.S. immigration policy has been closer to Cuccinelli’s version than the original poem. If you visit Ellis Island (part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument) you’ll learn that at the time Emma Lazarus wrote that poem, immigration policy was pretty simple: Be willing and able to work, or get back on the ship.
Immigration wasn’t run by poets. In fact, back then it wasn’t even run by the federal government. It was actually run by the individual states.
New York welcomed immigrants because it needed their labor. And while the work-or-go-home policy was harsh, if you passed the test, you could be on the ferry to Manhattan in a few hours – and getting help from volunteers like Emma Lazarus who worked with Jewish refugees.
Which makes me think – if we’re going to debate a poem from 1883, why not look at the immigration system that inspired it? Which was a system controlled by the states. So that New York would be free to welcome immigrants, Montana would be free to send them home. And as we watch to see which states prosper and which don’t, maybe we’ll finally find out who’s right.
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