Give me your tired, your poor
I recently read a letter that a reader had written to the editor of Newsweek magazine. She was responding to an article in a previous issue about how the inhabitants of a small town in Connecticut had forced recent immigrants from Ecuador to stop their noisy weekend volleyball games. She said that if all immigrants would be accepted only if they left their native culture behind, then the US would have moved very far away from its initial motto of "Give me your tired, your poor".
A little bit of research revealed that the above quote is part of a few sentences on the plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York. The lines are taken from the poem "The New Colossus" by the poet Emma Lazarus.
The last lines of the poem read as follows ...
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-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
America in the late 1800's must have been such a glorious destination, such a marked contrast from the rest of the world - A mecca for the hungry Irish peasants during the potato plague that left their crops ravaged, for the Sicilians persecuted by the North Italians, and many others.
The US at that time took everybody in, regardless of age, religion, education, language spoken, ability and national origin.
I cant help contrasting it with the current situation, where the US, although still the most sought after destination, has so many pre-conditions before admitting people from abroad - Test of English as a Foreign Language, necessity to be a qualified technical expert, quotas by nationality ....
Of course, I agree that this was inevitable, the US isnt as unpopulated as it was a long time ago, but its sad that there is no one place where the poor and downtrodden can look to, a place of hope, a place where they know they will be welcomed ...
A little bit of research revealed that the above quote is part of a few sentences on the plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York. The lines are taken from the poem "The New Colossus" by the poet Emma Lazarus.
The last lines of the poem read as follows ...
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-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
America in the late 1800's must have been such a glorious destination, such a marked contrast from the rest of the world - A mecca for the hungry Irish peasants during the potato plague that left their crops ravaged, for the Sicilians persecuted by the North Italians, and many others.
The US at that time took everybody in, regardless of age, religion, education, language spoken, ability and national origin.
I cant help contrasting it with the current situation, where the US, although still the most sought after destination, has so many pre-conditions before admitting people from abroad - Test of English as a Foreign Language, necessity to be a qualified technical expert, quotas by nationality ....
Of course, I agree that this was inevitable, the US isnt as unpopulated as it was a long time ago, but its sad that there is no one place where the poor and downtrodden can look to, a place of hope, a place where they know they will be welcomed ...
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