Immigration Law

LADY LIBERTY

By Annie Banerjee

The Statue of Liberty which was donated to the US by France, in 1886, still serves as a symbol for immigration in the United States. Some pages of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service web site still contain her picture, as does many immigration related web sites and materials. But the statue is engraved with a poem by Emma Lazarus, which is no longer valid, (I don?t think it ever was valid). Instead of saying:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

It should say:

Give us your money and wait forever
Before you can breathe free
Do the wretched jobs that we won?t do
And we will debate about whether to let you in
Whether to let you live our dream

Full post as published by US Immigration Matters on October 19, 2007 (boomark / email).