The Statue of Liberty in New York harbor was first conceived around 1870 by two Frenchmen ‒ Édouard René Lefèbvre de Laboulaye, the President of the French Anti-Slavery Society, and the sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi. France provided the Statue and the United States was responsible for the pedestal. The Statue was ultimately dedicated in 1886 with a multi-day celebration presided over by President Grover Cleveland. The Statue is modeled on the Roman goddess Libertas who is the patroness of liberty and it sought to celebrate the abolition of slavery. Lady Liberty is stepping out of chains at her feet.

However, the original idea behind the Statue was lost because of Emma Lazarus as well as the immigrants who entered the United States by way of New York harbor. In 1883 Lazarus, who was fiercely pro-immigrant, wrote a sonnet entitled “The New Colossus” for the purpose of raising funds for construction of the Statue’s pedestal. Her poem compared the New Colossus (Lady Liberty) to the ancient male Colossus of Rhodes. The poem was unmentioned at the dedication ceremony in 1886 and its words would not be placed on the Statue of Liberty until 1903. Still, it came to symbolize the meaning of the Statue.

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,

The net effect: The Statue, conceived as the triumph of freedom over slavery, instead became a symbol of welcome to the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Without immigrants there would be no present day America. Massive waves of immigrants came from 1850 to 1920. The Irish started in the late 1840s as a result of the potato famine. They were unwelcome with employment ads reading “Irish Need Not Apply.” But they kept coming and their sheer numbers transformed the cities where they landed. By 1880, they had elected an Irish American as Mayor of New York with Boston to follow in 1884. Immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe followed the Irish.  None were turned away or had to prove a skill; only the sick were quarantined. 

Many of us are descendants of immigrants who arrived in the great waves from 1850 to 1920. However, immigration continues to bring people here. Most first generation immigrants are now hiding in plain sight, generally in blue collar jobs. This became crystal clear as the result of a horrible workplace shooting in a town not far from Baltimore. 

A few weeks ago, a Judge sentenced Radee Prince to five life sentences for murdering three people and the attempted murder of two others. Prince worked at a company called Advanced Granite Solutions which is located in Edgewood, Maryland, and is approximately 30 miles north of Baltimore on I-95. Advanced, a small company, specializes in granite and stone applications and is the local place to go for your new granite kitchen countertop.

On October 18, 2017, Prince went to work, opened fire, killing three coworkers and seriously injuring two others.  The names of the murdered and seriously injured:

But now the “huddled masses” are not sailing into New York but, rather, crossing the Rio Grande River, the mountains and deserts of Arizona and New Mexico.  It is clear that the end of Trump and the beginning of Biden became a signal to those “yearning to breathe free.” And behind all of this are the “coyotes” who demand exorbitant sums to get people to the Promised Land. The “coyotes” are the vermin of this world who prey on the poor, the uneducated and the desperate and care nothing if their charges don’t make it as long as they have been paid.

Most people end up where they started. Usually, a person’s natural desire is to stay “home” with their families and loved ones. But what happens when “home” has become intolerable whether because of the absence of economic opportunity or lawlessness. That seems to be the case with respect to most people trying to enter the southern border. In story after story, those who are coming are coming because they are fleeing grinding poverty or gangs which are trying to recruit their children and which make their neighborhoods unsafe.

Last week there was a newspaper story about a Honduran father and his seven-year-old daughter attempting to cross the Rio Grande into Texas. The only contact they had in the United States was a relative in South Carolina. They were caught and sent back.

Then, he sent his daughter by herself and she made it only because of the kindness of a fellow immigrant who found her crying and alone short of the border. As an unaccompanied child, it is virtually certain that she will be allowed to stay.

I try to put myself in her father’s mind. The two had walked through Honduras, then through Guatemala and the length of Mexico to reach Texas. Now they’re stuck. But her father knows that she will be protected if she can reach the United States. He probably thinks “I will follow and find her.” But, down deep, he must also think “even if I don’t make it, it is better for her to make it and be alone than to be with me in Honduras.”

So what is the answer? Many immigrants who are here “legally” are not in favor of “illegal” immigrants and insist that they should have to go through the same bureaucratic, expensive and time-consuming process that they did. This notion may well account for Trump’s surprising level of support from Hispanic Americans in the 2020 election.

As long as Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico remain inhospitable to their people, the immigrants will come and the coyotes will prosper. United States’ immigration policy should first try to stabilize the situation in these countries. That, of course, is easier said than done. In the meantime, we have to develop a coherent policy for dealing with the “illegals.” Here are a few ideas:

1. Our present policy unreasonably limits “legal” immigrants with the result that there are too many “illegal” immigrants. One solution is to increase “legal” immigrants by encouraging family based immigration. In this way, an immigrant would have a family member to assist in his or her integration into the country. Trump railed against this, saying that he wanted “skilled” people to immigrate not the unskilled.  When my great grandfather immigrated, I don’t think he had any “skill” but he had a lot of moxie.  It takes a whole lot of moxie to leave the land of your birth, travel over 3,000 miles to a place you have never seen and where you do not know the prevailing language. His son, my grandfather, inherited the moxie but only got through the third grade.  Things seemed to have worked out pretty well from there.
2. New rules for granting asylum that recognize fear for personal safety from groups like gangs. Right now you can probably get asylum if the neighborhood gangs came after you because you were gay or because of your religious affiliation. However, your next-door neighbor who is dealing with the same gangs, would not qualify if they could not assert fear based on sexual orientation or religion.
3. Funds to help other countries remedy the problems at “home” and to help Mexico to secure its southern border.
4. Trump’s policy of making immigrants remain in Mexico until their asylum cases were decided would not have been so wrong if Mexico were safe but it is not. People escaping gang violence in Guatemala found the same in Mexico. What if funds were found to assist Mexico in providing safe waiting zones?

Some will say “where will the money come from?” If we want the money, we will find the money.  It now appears that there is no shortage of dollars flowing out of the Federal spigot.  Here is one recent example.

The recent $1.9 trillion COVID package passed by President Biden and the Democrats contained $86 billion for a “bailout” of Multi-Employer Pension Trusts. These Trusts were not victims of the pandemic; they had been consistently under funded by employers and workers alike for any number of years. No problem: let’s have the taxpayers properly fund them even though the affected parties had not done so and without even requiring that these Trusts clean up their acts going forward. This was an outright grant of money not a loan. This one item was approximately 5% of the recent legislation. You pretty much know that there is something wrong with a proposal when the Washington Post, New York Times and the Wall Street Journal all question it. These are the broadsheets for the Democratic and Republican parties and rarely agree on anything.

Ronald Reagan, quoting John Winthrop, referred to America as a “shining city on a hill.”  Later, he said:  “And if there had to be city walls, the walls have doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and heart to get there.”

It is fashionable in certain enlightened quarters to dismiss Reagan’s optimistic view of America and to decry its numerous sins: systemic racism, income inequality, gun violence, foreign misadventures and the like. Indeed, these same people scoff at the idea of American exceptionalism described by the “city on a hill” metaphor.

In the end, I believe that immigrants are a positive good for the country. Almost without exception, they are extremely hard-working, grateful and bring an energy to succeed which they pass on to their children. Those of us who were born here often do not realize how special, warts and all, this place is.  

If you don’t think America is a “shining city on a hill,” just ask an immigrant.