One kinder-and-gentler-than-the-racist-in-chief's rationale that I've heard for opposing asylum for northwardly mobile Central American émigrés is the notion that "Our
first obligation is to the native born poor for whom we have
done so little."
To that rationale I say, well, then, let's elect
GOP immigrant-phobes, because they are so committed to fulfilling
our "obligation to the native-born poor".
Yeah, not.
The political reality is that the GOP uses hysteria over
invading armies of brown women and children to gain power
in order to prevent government from taking responsibility
for solving social and economic problems, very much
including preventing government from ameliorating poverty in
America. They think of poor people as "losers"
who deserve their poverty. They think the market, not the
gummint, should "pick winners and losers" and that
economically successful people should NOT be forced to take
their holy coins out of their free-market pockets.
"Freedom" in their ideology is the freedom to not be
burdened by the troubles or failures of strangers -- not to mention the
freedom to discriminate against anyone you like, or rather
anyone you hate, especially if the bible tells you so.
The reality is that those who make a big stink about
smallpox-leprosy-tuberculosis-ridden, violent, criminal
immigrant hordes full of big, strong young men (a la rump's
daily dose of demagoguery:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayVnFKqTnsM) are desperate to shrink and eliminate funding for programs
that give poor people a chance -- e.g., nutritional subsidies,
public education, health care, access to and support for
college education, housing subsidies, pre-school programs,
peri-natal health care, women's reproductive health providers,
and on and on. That's only the first goal for the GOP, as they want even more desperately to leverage their intentionally created tax-cut deficit to slash and burn funding for
programs that make it possible for middle-class people to
sustain a middle-class life -- e.g., all the programs they
pejoratively call "entitlements".
Because their
world-view is based on the law of the jungle, because they
reject the guiding concept of building a diverse community
that values and invests in the welfare of and opportunities
for everyone, they stand proudly and defiantly in the way of
human progress.
Conversely, the people who see immigrants as additions, who
identify with the American ethos of "The New
Colossus", are the same people on whom poor people in
America can rely to care enough to try to understand their
needs and challenges and to act to meet them.
At the risk of being accused of cheap sentimentality and
bleeding-heart liberalism -- to which I reply in advance,
"Thank you very much!" -- I bring in Emma Lazarus's
Statue-of-Liberty sonnet to remind us all of the foundational,
essential American idea as a destination for exiles and
refugees from poverty, persecution and injustice. Below the
poem I'm pasting in some fascinating and poignantly relevant
biographical facts about Lazarus. The facts make it clear why
she was the poet who was asked to write a poem to be auctioned
off as part of a fundraiser to pay for constructing the
pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Lazarus wrote the poem in
1883, the pedestal was finished in 1886, but the poem was not
cast into a plaque and installed in the statue until 1903, 16
years after Lazarus's death.
As noted below Emma Lazarus descended from Jewish ancestors
who'd come to America before the Revolution. She was well-off
socio-economically, but the compassionate embrace of poor,
wretched immigrants was not an artistic conceit for her. That
conviction in her was an integral combination of her American
and her Jewish values, expressed through effective activism.
She organized vocationally-oriented refugee resettlement
efforts about the same time as HIAS (founded in 1881 as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) was founded. Knowing all that about her, we can infer that, for her, invoking the image of a colossus represented, not the
nationalism, dominance and "storied pomp" conveyed
by the old Colossus of Rhodes, but rather a nation of refuge
and humanism, compassion and justice. A nation whose
nurturing inclusiveness would light the world and become the
seed of its own eventual greatness.
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!"
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!"
Wikipedia:
"Emma
Lazarus was born in
New York City
,
July 22, 1849,
[5]
into a large
Sephardic Jewish
family.
[a]
She was the fourth of seven children of Moses Lazarus, a
wealthy Jewish merchant,
[7]
and sugar refiner;
[8]
and Esther Nathan.
[9]
One of her great-grandfathers on the Lazarus side was from Germany;
[10]
the rest of her Lazarus and Nathan ancestors were
originally from Portugal and resident in
New York
long before the
American Revolution
,
being among the first Jewish emigrants to the United States.
[8]
"
. . .
"Lazarus
became more interested in her Jewish ancestry after reading
the
George Eliot
novel
Daniel Deronda
,
and as she heard of the Russian
pogroms
that followed the
assassination of Tsar Alexander II
in 1881. As a result of this
anti-Semitic
violence, thousands of destitute Ashkenazi Jews emigrated
from the Russian
Pale of Settlement
to New York. Lazarus began to advocate on behalf of indigent
Jewish refugees. She helped establish the
Hebrew Technical Institute
in New York to provide
vocational training
to assist destitute Jewish immigrants to become
self-supporting. In 1883, she founded the Society for the
Improvement and Colonization of East European Jews.
[8]
An important forerunner of the
Zionist
movement, Lazarus argued for the creation of a
Jewish homeland
thirteen years before
Theodor Herzl
began to use the term 'Zionism'.
[29]
"
