Obama's misunderstanding of the Statute of Liberty
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Posted by Mike Scott on February 03, 2010 at 11:21:48
Glendora, CA 91741
February 3, 2010Barack Obama
President
The White House
Fax 202-456-2461Dear Mr. President: Re: Comprehensive Immigration Reform
Thank you for your letter of January 28, 2010. With all due respect, it’s a real stretch to draw much of a correlation between immigration and the Statute of Liberty. The Statute of Liberty was given to the U.S. by France as a token of friendship, and had nothing to do with immigration. None of the speeches at the Statute's dedication in October 1886 even mentioned immigrants or immigration. President Grover Cleveland spoke about Franco-American friendship and American ideals.
The words, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”, were written by Emma Lazarus in 1883, before the Statute was erected in New York, & under construction in Paris. Ms. Lazarus was a fourth-generation American, a member of New York's Sephardic Jewish community, who wrote these words as a protest against the pogroms (“ethnic cleansing of Jews”) taking place in Russia. Emma Lazarus wrote her above sonnet, "The New Colossus" for the Bartholdi (Statute of Liberty) Pedestal Fund.
Emma Lazarus died in 1887 and her sonnet was forgotten & later found in a New York bookshop years after Emma's death. Georgina Schuyler, who found the sonnet, didn't consecrate it to unrestricted immigration when she donated it to Lighthouse Bureau, but rather "in loving memory of Emma Lazarus."
Emma Lazarus’ sonnet, “The New Colossus," was placed at the base of the Statue of Liberty in 1903, with other memorabilia, and inscribed on a tablet inside the Statue. Without question, this sonnet expressed the hopes of many immigrants who entered this country during the early 20th-Century. However, the original intent of those involved in bringing the Statute from concept to fruition, including Emma Lazarus, was that it was to be an international symbol of freedom. Because of passage of time tends to distort original intent, and give rise to the kinds of distortion expressed by illegal immigration advocates, we shouldn't allow the meaning of the Statute's essence to get twisted into fantasies and ideological distortions, that this was an American invitation to everyone on this planet to move to the United States. Or just as specious, Emma Lazarus' words weren't even close to some kind of ideological semaphore for potential illegal immigrants that signified "just make it across the border".
Many of your speeches deal with the transition from today’s severe recession to tomorrows prosperous high-tech future. The lynch-pin of our 21st economy is an educated and skilled workforce. Increases in productivity will allow American companies to do more work with fewer employees, but pay more without spurring inflation. Tomorrow’s recovering American economy will be fueled by investments in computers, information technology, telecommunications, e-commerce, bioscience, robotics, mechanized factories, and other technologies that require a labor force comprised of highly educated people with marketable skills. Bluntly speaking, we need far less crop harvesters, gardeners, dry wallers, busboys, hospitality workers, car washers, ect., and more scientists, entrepreneurs and similarly skilled individuals. What’s more important for our 21st-Century nation, - millions of uneducated & unskilled foreigners for which there’s no need, or mega thousands of highly skilled & educated foreigners for which there may be a need?
Three of the your cabinet secretaries, some in your administration & others in Congress seem impervious about the toxic employment threat caused by illegals to unskilled American workers. Amnesty & eventual citizenship for low-skilled illegal immigrants will significantly increase welfare costs and poverty, while continuing to exacerbate the unemployment miseries of vulnerable unskilled American workers. Our jobless rate won’t drop below 9% until 2012.
Amnestied illegal immigrants with low educational & skill levels are likely to become huge fiscal drains on other taxpayers.* Half of all adult illegal immigrants in the U.S. have less than a high school education, most are unskilled, and therefore don’t earn enough money to pay enough taxes to cover the government benefits they receive. Amnesty would eventually make them eligible for the full array of welfare and medical benefits offered by local, state and federal governments. Once these individuals become citizens, the net additional costs to the federal government of benefits for these individuals will be mega $ billions annually.
I don’t know where you are on the total CIR package, but I do know that euphemisms such as “stepping out of the shadows” and “welcoming society”, are essentially designed by those supporting comprehensive immigration reform to keep their true motives for such legislation deep within the shadows by avoiding open debate with the reality that the age of American innocence with illegal immigration has ended.
Sincerely,
Michael Scott
*According to a variety of sources, illegal immigration’s net cost to California is $8.9 billion annually. That’s one-third of our State’s current $26.3 billion budget deficit.