Erasing the message of the
Statue of Liberty
"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!"
...or not. Today a closed door is the message coming out of the
White House from President Trump and some Congressional allies.
They can dress
it up as much as they want, but it harkens back to some of the uglier moments
of our republic.
There was a time when school children would learn the words of Emma Lazarus emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty without a cloud of irony.
For
all the debate and demonization around illegal immigration - and it should be
noted that that issue is a complicated one - what was largely uncontroversial
was legal immigration.
That hasn't always been the case.
From the Know Nothing Party
who railed against Catholics "ruining the real America" in the
mid-19th century, to the anti-semitism, anti-Asian, and all the other anti
feelings after the great waves of immigration over the 19th and early 20th
century, several times we have seen bigotry undermine America's destiny as a
land of open opportunity.
Now of course we cannot be home to everyone, but we can be as
humane as possible. We also can recognize how much immigrants have shaped our
culture, powered our economy, and sparked our scientific and technical innovations.
As President Trump sees a country increasingly unified against
his divisive agenda, he is reaching for one of the oldest tools in the American
political playbook.
Stir division. Pit people against each other. Blame others
for your own problems.
Like with his attacks on transgender soldiers, I think
the blowback here will be strong.
I suspect Mr. Trump will couch this action by
saying he is fighting for the rights of blue-collar America (which in his
incarnation is mostly white). He may get some traction.
We do need an open and
honest debate over immigration in America, but do we really want to begin that
debate with a cynical gambit such as this?
