Today's thing which I wonder how many of my fellow Americans agree with.

[minoanmiss]

This is a deliberately self-centered entry. I could have written about this more globally, but, well, it hit me in the gut how the current administration makes me feel ever less welcome in my own country. I know I'm not alone in that, to say the least, but it just strikes me so forcefully how personally I keep feeling their actions.

This is a symbolic one, and yet... I should probably rant about the more tangibly awful ones like the proposed Means Test, but this in its symbolism sums them all up.

Immigration official Ken Cuccinelli: Statue of Liberty poem refers to immigrants from Europe

(The poem's proper title is "The New Colossus", but the fact that he couldn't be bothered to refer to that title seems symbolic, too.)

"Acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli on Tuesday evening doubled down on his characterization of the famous Emma Lazarus Statue of Liberty sonnet, saying the poem was referring mostly to immigrants coming from Europe."

So I, like many children of immigrants, grew up in NYC. I've personally visited the Statue of Liberty twice. I have pasted "The New Colossus" on my wall and into my diary, and I'm about to paste it below. Every time I read it I felt Emma Lazarus and the Statue of Liberty welcoming my parents in, welcoming in people from all over the world.

But according to Mr. Cuccinelli, I don't get to think that. My family's not from Europe. That welcome doesn't belong to me. (He also said, “Give me your tired, your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge,” never mind that immigrants in the 1800s used social services more often than immigrants in the 2000s, but that's from memory and I don't feel like looking up the cites at the moment. Anyway this is an aside.) Nor to Colin Powell, for an example of a Jamaican-American whom, unlike me, Mr Cuccinelli might possibly have some respect for (maybe), or to so many other people I could name. Only to those from Europe.

I wish I could just think he's one asshole, but one, he has a huge position of power, and two, how many of my fellow Americans agree with him? Certainly those who voted for Trump, and quite a few others as well. I've heard soi-disant liberals complain about immigrants for reasons ranging from crime to environmentalism, after all.

How many of my fellow Americans want to throw me out, and what's the critical mass needed for them to do so?

At any rate, thank you once again, Emma Lazarus.

The New Colossus
BY EMMA LAZARUS
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “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!”

Comments

[bikergeek]

Mr. Cuccinelli can take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

There was a time when WASPs thought that that welcome didn't belong to Italians, either.

[cmcmck]

Nor the Irish.

And a welcome was never extended to my Romani ancestors- not that they were or are ever welcome anywhere..........

[bikergeek]

Yup. All of that.

[cmcmck]

Thanks for adding me- I've done likewise so you should now see everything else that isn't shared pics! :o)

[baranduin]

This version by Lou Reed’s Dirty Boulevard captures Cucinelli’s thoughts I’m thinking.

“Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I'll piss on 'em
that's what the Statue of Bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses, let's club 'em to death
and get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard”

[kore]

(Love that song.)

[annonynous.livejournal.com]

People were horrified at the thought of baby seals being clubbed to death. I would hope people would be at least as horrified about doing it to fellow humans.

Ann O.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I've read labor history from the period in question, and if his ancestors don't show up like Charles Dickens' Christmas Ghosts, it's only because they've given up on him and are finding new descendants. What he is willfully ignoring is that immigrants coming through Ellis Island depended on settlement houses, prior immigrants from their county, village, coreligionists etc. And then they extended a hand to the greenhorns that followed after them.

At the time the poem was brought forth, people didn't care for it. That'd be a certain segment of WASP people. Similarly, when France donated Lady Liberty, Americans were worried she'd have a bared breast.

I want my country back. I want these prejudiced power mad tin pots to be scared.

[kore]

He can go piss up a rope, Emma Lazarus was specifically an activist for JEWISH REFUGEES FROM TSARIST RUSSIA and was friends with a whole lot of the Transcendentalist circle, and she inspired her friend Rose Hawthorne (Nathaniel's daughter) to work with terminally ill poor people. ARRRRRRRRRGH.

[redbird]

Yeah, that sucks, and I don't know how many people agree with him, except that it's too many.

As bikergeek said, they don't even mean all of Europe, or all the immigrants from the parts they do approve of.

[acelightning]

I've always considered the Statue of Liberty to be New York City's and America's own specific Goddess (I've been up to Her crown, back when my agility and stamina were younger), and I love the poem and will recite it in public at the drop of a hint. I find that bigoted asshole's rewrite utterly blasphemous. As an Italian-american, his ancestors were "wretched refuse" at some point - that's true of almost every white American, including me.

There are three Goddesses I call upon to use their combined powers to make this country back into the haven that has drawn people from all over the world to a chance to make better lives for themselves and their children. The first is Lady Liberty, the Mighty Woman With A Torch whose flame is the imprison'd lightning. The second is Columbia, the personification of this country (as Britannia is of Britain and Marianne is of France). And the third is Lady Justice, who belongs to all nations and all people. (And, yes, I've seen the picture in which Lady Liberty and Lady Justice are sharing a passionate kiss. Columbia deserves at least a hug too.)

[julian]

He burns me up, but I pretty much expected this bullshit once I read Bannon & Miller's general opinion of immigration in general. We just have to fight it.

(One of the annoying parts of all this is that immigrants pay *more* in taxes and commit *fewer* crimes than current citizens. It's infuriating, the lack of logic, common sense, or compassion.)

[stranger]

Emma Lazarus wrote "world-wide welcome" and "ancient lands... give me your tired, your poor..." Mr. Cuccinelli evidently cannot read well. He also doesn't speak for U.S. ideals, nor for a large number of its citizens, nor even for the economic fact that immigrants' labor has built and continues to support the nation. He is clearly expressing his own bigotry, and will be remembered, if at all, with Reagan's assertion that ketchup is a vegetable.

[ilyena_sylph]

He's wrong, he's utterly wrong, this entire Administration is Utterly Wrong, and I'm so glad you're here.

Also my icon desires to punch him in the face.

[annonynous.livejournal.com]

I would note that Ms Lazarus' wording is Mother of Exiles, NOT Mother of Europeans.

Ann O.

[potofsoup]

yeah, I've been having some especially strong feels about these latest developments

[cmcmck]

It refers to everyone but this arse is to thick to see it.

[cjsmith]

I don’t know how many. One is too many.

I am glad you’re here.

[corylea]

We are ALL the descendants of immigrants. (Yes, even Native Americans, who merely immigrated here earlier than the rest.)

Many Americans have lost their idealism and now have a motto of "I've got mine." It's disgusting and disheartening and frightening, to see the naked selfishness that so many Americans are willing to manifest.

But they aren't all there are! I was reading just yesterday about an 11-year-old girl whose mother works in a nursing home. She sometimes goes to work with her mom and hangs out with the old folks in the home. She heard how they get just $40 a month for their own needs, which doesn't stretch very far. She asked one old lady what she wanted if she could have just three things and was told, "A chocolate bar. Toilet paper that's really soft. A birthday card to send to my son." So the little girl took her allowance and went to the grocery store and bought a Hershey bar, some Charmin, and a card. The old lady was thrilled, so the next week, the girl asked another old person what they wanted.

The assholes make the news, but there really ARE good people, still. Millions, even.

*hug* I don't blame you for being scared. I'm scared, and I'm a white, native-born American. Of course, my Irish ancestors were seen as scum, and my German ancestors were seen as dangerous, but in this century, they're now just "white." *rolls eyes*

[gale_storm]

Great story about the little girl purchaser-gifter-whatever-you’d-call-her!

I understand being scared. I’m white (although I did have a Chinese great-grandmother) and native-born, but I moved away from the States to find out what else was in the world, and it doesn’t seem as though that curiosity is accepted or encouraged nowadays.

[amaebi]

Yes, these are terrible times. May they bear good fruit in resistance and bold reconstruction, anyway.

But the costs are horrific.

[sabotabby]

I thought that was the Onion when I first read it.

There's a lot about America that is so fucked up, to be honest. Genocide and slavery are its very bones. Occasionally it demonstrates sparks of greatness, and that poem represents one of those moments to me, so of course they want to ruin that and all it represents.