Mark Steyn writes:
The poem is used to invert precisely the meaning of the statue. The actual sculpture is called “Liberty Enlightening The World” and shows her holding a tablet marked “1776”.
In other words, it’s not about importing people but about exporting American ideas. And, if you did that effectively, you wouldn’t need to import huddled masses – or, at any rate, not on such a scale. Emma Lazarus has been used to subvert the Statue of Liberty.
Brenda Walker (et al):
Inscribed on a small brass plaque mounted inside the statue’s stone base, the poem is an appendix, added belatedly, and it can safely be removed, shrouded or at least marked with a big asterisk. We live in a different era of immigration, and the schmaltzy sonnet offers a dangerously distorted picture of the relationship between newcomers and their new land.
In fact, the environmentally correct number of immigrants is ZERO. Developers are paving over farmland to house the expanding population, and America no longer feeds itself, but relies on imported food. Water shortage is a pressing problem in many areas, where additional users draw down on the finite supply more rapidly.
In Crowdifornia, public transportation planners plot a future of standing room only for riders.
