{"id":21853,"date":"2019-08-20T17:18:40","date_gmt":"2019-08-20T21:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=21853"},"modified":"2019-08-20T17:18:42","modified_gmt":"2019-08-20T21:18:42","slug":"public-charge-welfare-media-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2019\/08\/20\/public-charge-welfare-media-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"You Can Break a Law, You Can\u2019t Break a Poem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

National Public Radio<\/a> reporter Rachel Martin recently interviewed Ken Cucinelli, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. During the course of their discussion, she asked him if the Trump administration\u2019s new public charge<\/a> rule violated the ethos represented by the poem inscribed on a plaque inside the base of the Statue of Liberty<\/a> – \u201cNew Colossus<\/a>\u201d by Emma Lazarus. Mr. Cuccinelli replied that it did not, immigrants should be required to financially stand on their own two feet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus emerged one of the dopiest political narratives<\/a> to come out of the mainstream media in recent memory. And most major news outlets began treating Emma Lazarus\u2019 sonnet as a binding, statutory proclamation of U.S. immigration rules. The \u201cLaw of Lazarus,\u201d if you will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, mainstream journalists claimed that \u201cNew Colossus\u201d is the<\/em><\/strong>\ndefinitive statement of what it means to be a \u201cnation of immigrants.\u201d And they\nasserted that plans to enforce public charge rules, which require that\nimmigrants refrain from accepting means tested public benefits during their\nfirst five years in the United States, were merely a cover for limiting\nimmigration to Caucasian, English speakers. They\u2019re wrong on all counts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In case you are unfamiliar with \u201cNew Colossus,\u201d it is a 14 line sonnet\nthat ends with the oft-quoted lines: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGive me your tired, your poor,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe\nfree,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to\nme,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poem<\/a> was written by Ms. Lazarus specifically to be auctioned off as part of the campaign to raise funds for the pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty was erected. Her verse was only added to the monument in 1903, following her death. And, as anyone who has visited the statue can tell you, it\u2019s nestled away in an interior stairwell and doesn\u2019t feature prominently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite assertions to the contrary, it is clear that Ms. Lazarus was not<\/em><\/strong>\narguing for open borders. She was a well-known advocate for Jewish refugees\nfleeing pogroms in Czarist Russia. And her verse compares the Statue of\nLiberty, which symbolizes freedom and a republican form of government, to the\nancient Colossus of Rhodes, which Ms. Lazarus used to represent a hidebound old\nworld. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than a general statement advocating that the U.S. accept only poor\nmigrants, her poem was an acknowledgement that the America had become a prime\ndestination for those seeking personal liberty \u2013 including the liberty to\nsucceed by dint of one\u2019s own labors. It celebrates those who wished to make\ntheir own way in the world, free from the religious, social and political\nstrictures that were prominent in 19th<\/sup> Century Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It does not refer not to poverty-stricken immigrants searching for a social safety net. In fact, as Daniel Horowitz writing at Conservative <\/a><\/em>Review<\/a> has noted, \u201cThere was no welfare when Emma Lazarus wrote that poem, nor did it exist throughout the entire duration of the Great Wave of immigration. By definition, someone coming here during that era, even if they were currently poor, was engaging in a risky act of rugged individualism whereby they had to sink or swim on their own.\u201d As such, says Horowitz, Lazarus\u2019 poem \u201cmeans exactly the opposite of what immigrant welfare<\/a> advocates think.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, why has the borderless-world contingent locked onto a schmaltzy piece of middling verse as if it represented the Founding Fathers\u2019 be-all end-all vision of immigration policy? Because despite their best efforts, immigrant advocates and their media allies have not persuaded Americans that the U.S is obligated to admit and pay for every foreigner who comes knocking on our door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lacking any rational arguments against longstanding immigration requirements that protect American taxpayers from financial ruin, the open borders lobby appeals to raw emotion and accuses the president of violating the \u201cgenerous\u201d national spirit that allegedly prevailed when Ellis Island made America great. However, there\u2019s a huge problem with their logic. Immigrants who go on the dole<\/a> are breaking the law \u2013 not violating a questionable interpretation of a poorly understood poem. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

National Public Radio reporter Rachel Martin recently interviewed Ken Cucinelli, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. During the course of their discussion, she asked him if the Trump administration\u2019s new public charge rule violated the ethos represented by the poem inscribed on a plaque inside the base of the Statue of Liberty<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":13252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[7],"tags":[1524,275,1909,502],"yst_prominent_words":[1974,6415,6416,6410,1980,1963,6411,6413,2016,6380,3282,6412,6417,1975,1971,6419,6414,6383,1939,6418],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21853"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21854,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21853\/revisions\/21854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21853"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=21853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}