I not only think that the banner should be removed, but that the dumb poem at the statue’s base should be sandblasted away.
We have the right to determine who gets into our country.
PING!
> “I not only think that the banner should be removed, but that the dumb poem at the statue’s base should be sandblasted away.”
No, that would be Taliban-like. It’s a good poem, and for many years this country proudly served as a place of refuge for people “yearning to breathe free” (and with the proper oversight it still can, on a lesser scale). That was an 1883 poem, though, not an immigration policy.
In the decades following its composition a still sparsely populated United States benefited from the arrival of millions of immigrants (the vast majority from Europe). Most were strongly motivated to assimilate, and subjected to pressure to assimilate from the outside as well.
Conditions have changed greatly since then, though. If we wish to preserve this country as a place where its people can “breathe free”, we can’t afford to accept — indiscriminately — large waves of immigrants, not when many of the current ones have no intention of assimilating, and harbor world views to a great degree inconsistent and even hostile to American traditions. A refuge can no longer serve as a refuge when doing so threatens the very characteristics that led to it being a refuge.
..."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!"
Beautiful lines, but not a practical immigration policy under current conditions (when it's not easy to distinguish which ones really yearn to breathe free).