You wrote:
"'...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...'
"The statue of liberty advertises America as a garbage dump, where the rest of the world can dump their "wretched refuse". It tells all the world's nations, that they can gather up all their homeless people, their poor, their lepers, their insane, their bums, their welfare moochers, and their criminals, put them on ships, and dump them on America's shores."
The term "wretched refuse,"as used by Lazarus, however, applied to persons who came through the "door" in the legitimate manner prescribed by law, and Lazarus's use of that term seems to have been simply a dramatic way to recognize something we overlook today.
Let's remember that wherever there are oppressive regimes, past or present, all who disagree with the ideology of the political class are deemed to be expendable, therefore, "refuse." If we doubt that, let's read and listen to the rhetoric of the Far Left in America in 2010 concerning the individuals who lead or make up the TEA Party movement.
When the Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives shudders at the thought of them and calls them "Astro Turf," and unmentionable and vile comments are made about a former governor and outspoken opponent of Administration and Congressional policies, and when Congresswoman Bachman and others are treated with disrectful personal disdain, to say nothing of the Administration's disregard of the opinions of ordinary Americans, then perhaps American citizens who oppose them have become "wretched refuse" by their descriptions of us.
Let's not cast out the beautiful symbolism of Lazarus' words, written at a time when people came through a legal process that built this nation into the greatest on earth, simply because we are looking through a glass that has been clouded by illegal immigration and poor government policy.
America remains that "shining city on a hill," for millions, and Bartholdi's statue is constructed to reflect life, liberty and law.
It is time to bring America's reality back into line with "the Lady's" beautiful symbolism--not to throw out the symbol.
>>>>we are all the descendants of the majority of those who left the “Old World” to seek liberty and opportunity. Many were poor and indentured themselves to others who already had come to the New World, sometimes for years, just to be able to have freedom
Americans have a culture that glorifies the underdog, and they like to think of their ancestors as the ultimate underdogs who overcame great odds, and built the greatest nation on earth. But the truth is more complicated than that. The average immigrant to America in its earlier years was a hard-working European peasant, who was harder working, more prosperous, more intelligent, and more enterprising, than the average European peasant.
IQ tests that were carried out in the early 1900s, proved that white Americans scored higher on IQ tests than Europeans. Today, white Americans score 103 on the Stanford-Binet IQ scale, compared to 100 for Europeans. While America was not built by European aristocrats, it was built by the cream of the European peasantry. America was built by those ambitious and frustrated European peasants, whose economic opportunities were being limited by oppressive European laws, that favored Europe’s hereditary land-owning aristocrats. When those ambitious, driven, hardworking peasants got to America, they were able to realize their full human potential, and in the process, they made America the world’s greatest nation.
The cost of a ship ticket from Europe to America was greater than the annual salary of an average European peasant. Only the hardest working, most disciplined, and most enterprising European peasants, could afford the cost of the ship ticket. Once those peasants got here, there was a screening process by American immigration officials, where the immigrants were screened for physical and mental ailments, as well as for character defects. Those who came to America as indentured servants faced a similar screening process, and only those who were proven to be the fittest and most hard working, were allowed into America. If every European peasant had the ability to come to America, all Europeans would have come to America.
A homeless man living in Warsaw, Poland, in 1910, could not afford to come to America, however much he desired to come to America. He could not afford a ship ticket for a trans-atlantic crossing. But a homeless man living in Mexico City, who desires to go to America, can come here easily. There is nothing to stop him.
I am not opposed to immigrants. I am only calling for an effective system of filtering legal immigrants, to ensure that we get the best that the world has to offer.