According to the media, the “Give me your tired. . .” poem on the Statue of Liberty is the be-all, end-all of American immigration policy, so authoritative and unquestionable it might as well be part of the Constitution (even though the media doesn’t much care for the Constitution).
That’s why Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of the Citizenship and Immigration Office, recently got himself into trouble with CNN’s Erin Burnett–for daring to question the holy dogma of THE POEM establishing America as the world’s homeless shelter:
“Erin Burnett was not going to let Ken Cuccinelli off the hook for his despicable rewrite of Emma Lazarus’ poem on the Statue of Liberty. Instead, she pinned him to the wall and watched him squirm like a worm on a hook.
There was a back and forth where he ultimately accused her of “twisting this like everybody else on the left has done all day today.” That accusation simply prompted her to bring receipts.
“You’re saying — it’s important — you’re saying it’s important to stand on your own two feet,” she said. Cuccinelli agreed with that.
Burnett then informed him (again) that the poem did not say that, and again he deflected, first blaming the NPR reporter for bringing it up (how dare they?) and then Burnett.”
THE POEM DOES NOT SAY THAT, BIGOT!
“She was having no part of his little dance, coming back to bring her receipts, after repeating how he had bastardized the poem to be one for ugly xenophobes instead of an inspiring invitation.
“However it came up, you said, ‘Give me your tired and poor who can stand on their own two feet, not become a public charge,” she reiterated.
Again, he agreed, unapologetically.
“The poem reads, ‘give me your tired your poor 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!’ Wretched refuse. That’s what the poem says America is supposed to stand for. So what do you think America stands for?” she asked.”
Replace the word “poem” with “Bible” and CNN’s Erin Burnett is no different from a religious zealot.
Cuccinelli’s response:
“Well, of course that poem referred back to people coming from Europe where they had class-based societies. Where people were considered wretched if they weren’t in the right class. And it was introduced — it was written one year — one year after the first federal public charge rule was written that says — I’ll quote it — any person unable to take care of himself without becoming a public charge, unquote, would be inadmissible in the terms that my agency deals with, they can’t do what’s called adjusting status getting a green card becoming legal permanent residents. Same exact time, Erin, same exact time. And the year is went on the statue of liberty, 1903, another federal law was passed expanding the elements of public charge by Congress. This is a — this is a central part.”
Decent response by Cuccinelli, but he is under no obligation to try to interpret the poem in a way that bolsters his stance on immigration.
The poem is pro-open borders, period.
But that’s okay because we are not under any obligation to agree with it or live according to its message.
We don’t have to care what Emma Lazarus thinks about immigration.
Anytime we talk about immigration, open borders propagandists like Erin Burnett will screech “BUT THE POEM! THE POEM SAYS!”
But who cares? Not me.
The important thing Ken Cuccinelli brought up was the “Public Charge” law, enacted one year before Lazarus’ stupid poem was affixed to the Statue of Liberty, which denies immigration to Lazarus’ exalted “wretched refuse” of other countries–i.e. immigrants who can’t take care of themselves and who are a drain on taxpayers.
Cuccinelli, who is spearheading the Trump administration’s effort to, not even enact but merely resume enforcement of, the “public charge” laws already on the books, has real legal precedent on his side. Erin Burnett has a stupid poem on her’s.
In fact, Ken Cuccinelli and the Trump administration have 374 years of legal precedent on their side when it comes to public charge laws.
The first one was enacted in 1645 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony:
“The English colony of Massachusetts enacted the earliest American public charge laws in 1645. The arrival in the colonies of undesirables spurred other colonies to enact similar laws. “By the end of the seventeenth century American colonists were especially reluctant to extend a welcome to impoverished foreigners and the ‘Rogues and vagabonds’ that England had so graciously decided she could spare.” Many colonies protected themselves against public charges through such measures as mandatory reporting of ship passengers, immigrant screening and exclusion upon arrival of designated “undesirables,” and requiring bonds for potential public charges.
For example, a law enacted in colonial Massachusetts in 1700 kept out the infirm who had no security against becoming public charges. The law required ship captains to post bonds for “lame, impotent, or infirm” passengers who were “incapable of maintaining themselves.” The bond requirement sought to prevent the new arrival from becoming reliant on public relief. Without a bond from the captain, the vessel had to return the person to his home country.
New York adopted a law in 1691 that required an immigrant to have “a visible Estate” or “a manual occupation” or “give sufficient surety, that he shall not be a burden or charge to the respective places, he shall come to Inhabit.” Delaware in 1740 sought to exclude potential public charges, including “any such infant, lunatick [sic], aged, maimed, impotent or vagrant person;” the colony thus enacted a law whose title was to “Prevent Poor and Impotent Persons [from] being Imported.” Following American independence, states either automatically continued to enforce colonial-era public charge laws or reaffirmed those laws.”
Since the very beginning of this country, we have sought to avoid being saddled with unproductive burdens via immigration.
We don’t want immigrants coming here to take advantage of our public services.
It is not our side who are the radicals attempting to go against the American tradition on immigration.
It is instead the open borders globalists of the past 20-30 years who have decided to reverse centuries of American immigration policy in order to flood the country with poor third-worlders.
We are under no obligation to care what their stupid poem says.