Here's acting USCIS director Ken Cuccinelli saying on NPR this morning that the Statue of Liberty plaque should be changed to read, "give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge." pic.twitter.com/q8OoNn3k6r
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 13, 2019
I asked the president about the Statue of Liberty poem. He said: it’s not fair for the American taxpayer to pay for immigrants to come into the United States pic.twitter.com/hAjDCZXcvL
— Jeff Mason (@jeffmason1) August 13, 2019
Per Vox:
… This is not the first time the Trump administration’s effort to curtail legal immigration has brought it into public conflict with the Statue of Liberty. Back in August 2017, when the administration was pushing an ill-fated bill that would’ve restricted legal immigration while giving priority to fluent English speakers, CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta grilled White House policy adviser Stephen Miller during a news conference about how “what the president is proposing here does not sound like it’s in keeping with American tradition when it comes to immigration. … The Statue of Liberty says, ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’”
Miller replied by trying to make a distinction between the statute and Lazarus’s poem, which wasn’t placed on it until years after the statue was installed in New York Harbor.
Anti-American Open Thread: The GOP Wants to Make America SmallerPost + Comments (94)