The Cooch opined that “That poem was referring back to people coming from Europe.”
He’s right. The version on the Statue is an expurgation. I remember the original words so clearly from my lit classes.
“Give me your poor, but not really poor like in Asia or Africa or Latin America, but kind of Norway-poor.
“Give me your tired, so they may rest their handsome blonde and ginger heads within our shores.”
“Give me your huddled masses, like those guys who play rugby or Aussie-rule football, if they have at least two major credit cards and a FICO score of at least 750.”
I’m kidding , but Cuccinelli also re-wrote the poem!
Well, at least he’s forthright about being a racist.
He didn’t say the poem only applied to Europeans or that we shouldn’t admit non-Europeans. He was replying to a question about the meaning of the poem’s phrase “wretched refuse,” that it was a sarcastic reference to the class system then in effect primarily in Europe. Standard rule of thumb should be that if a quote too perfectly illustrates what a wretched piece of refuse the source’s political opponent is, go dig up the original quote.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/fake-news-trump-official-did-not-say-statue-of-liberty-poem-was-only-for-europeans/
Also, for the record, that poem has nothing to do with US immigration law, no matter how many times it gets cited as such.
Actually he did say the poem only applied to Europeans.
When asked why we no longer want the wretched, poor refuse of other societies, he said that the poem was written specifically about people escaping class-based societies from Europe. “”Well, of course that poem was referring back to people coming from Europe where they had class-based societies.”
That not correct, but let’s assume for a second that it is. In response to her question, he’s demonstrating that the situation is different now. OK, let’s grant that. How it is different? People are still escaping from class-based societies, so that’s the same. Oh, I see how it’s different. Those were Europeans. (Read: white people)
The Cooch is trying desperately to spin his way out of this, and he was fine when he stuck to his original point, which was that immigrants should serve the needs of our society, not vice-versa. I agreed with him up until then. Where he got into trouble was his superfluous introduction of the word “European.” In essence, that’s when he turned over his hole card and showed the true basis of the policy. These racist guys usually come up with a carefully crafted veneer of reasonableness that sounds perfectly fine to independent voters like me, but then they always end up betraying their real motives when they have to deviate from the script.
I also enjoyed when he claimed “I wasn’t rewriting the poem. I was answering a question,” and then kept doubling down on that lie. I guess he thinks nobody could possibly do both of those at the same time, sort of like walking and chewing gum. (Obviously, he answered the question BY rewriting the poem.)
I mentioned earlier that he didn’t even have his facts right. I assume he didn’t personally do the research but was just reading some ignorant blather handed to him by a spin doctor. The actual Emma Lazarus poem had nothing to do with Europe in general or class-based societies. She was inspired by the fact that the USA accepted so many Jewish refugees from the systematic anti-Semitism of Russia! The New Colossus was really the only completely secular work she turned out in that part of her life. Her other work in the 1882-1883 period was called “Songs of a Semite.”
So what the poem really said was, “Thanks, America, for inviting in so many poor, persecuted Jews!”
That article also has some basic facts wrong.
For example “Public charge rules in an immigration context date back to the first comprehensive immigration law, passed in 1882, one year before the Statue of Liberty plaque. While the plaque did not use public charge language, this idea was widely accepted at the time.”
First of all, 1882 was 21 years before the plaque was placed on the Statue of Liberty, although the poem was actually written in 1883.
Second, while that thinking may have been “widely accepted” at the time (and I’m not sure how widely it was actually accepted), it was certainly not accepted by the poem’s author, who believed the exact opposite! Her biographer wrote, “Lazarus was inspired by (Henry) George’s argument that justice could best be achieved by aiding and empowering the men and women who are at the very bottom of the social scale.”
It mystifies me that the Cooch thought that “Europe” comment was important or relevant in the first place. On the surface, the comment seems utterly irrelevant and superfluous.
But I guess irrelevance is not the real problem.
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Sadly, after having written so critically about the motivation behind this policy, I have to admit that I agree with the general outline of the policy. (I have not read the full text, and I probably never will.) It seems to me the immigration should work like this:
Society “X” needs 125 doctors and 10,000 farm laborers.
Like an employment search, it lets those needs be known world-wide.
it interviews candidates and
lets in the best applicants.
We could be actively seeking immigrants based on our needs, as opposed to passively accepting anyone who knocks on the door, or accepting anyone who has a close relative here.
I know it’s much more complicated than this, and that there are humanitarian concerns and international agreements to consider, but the general principle is that we should be active, not passive, in choosing who will join the America team.
The thing about judging the motivations behind support for certain policies, even if some people support a policy for racist or other offensive reason, it doesn’t mean that everyone that supports that policy does so for an offensive reason. As I was saying the other day, too often I will hear a politician espouse a policy with which I agree, but I find it hard to believe he/she really UNDERSTANDS why that policy is a good idea. Perhaps there is a Bizarro universe out there where Donald Trump is a policy wonk, but that is certainly not true in this universe. This hardly needs to be said, but people like Donald Trump and Rep. King give Republicans a bad name.
Scoop, I agree with you completely about what the goals of our legal immigration system should be. Speaking strictly for myself, I support cracking down on illegal immigration for a number of reasons (none of which are racist). First, as a nation we have the right to decide who can enter and how long those who enter can stay. Second, a never ending stream of poor unskilled immigrants reduces job opportunities and depresses the wages for poorer Americans. The argument that they only do jobs Americans wont do isn’t valid in my opinion because it should be restated that they do jobs Americans wont do for the wages paid to illegal immigrants. If there really is a critical labor shortage than we can increase legal immigration. Third, if we can be reasonably sure we can prevent (most) future illegal immigration there will be political support for giving legal status to currently illegal immigrants.
But just to be clear, my support for enforcing immigration laws does not include support for putting children in cages. On the other hand, if you have people that have made themselves rich by employing illegal immigrants, by all means lock them up.
None is saying that the poem is the law, as much as you try to make it sound like they are.
What they’re saying is that like the Declaration (also not a law) or the Bible, it is part of our traditional ethos as a nation. If we’re going to abandon it now, at least be clear that we are and why.
That’s bullshit. You dirty liberals will take EVERYTHING out of context to make it sound racist. Very pathetic. Time to grow up.
Get a clue! Just hurling insults is extremely lame.
Out of context? He brought the subtext into text when he admitted his belief that the sentiments on the Statue applied only to Europeans. You can’t get any more racist without actually reestablishing slavery.
Not only that, he would probably be shocked to see what the poem is really about. It is about flight from Europe, but Emma Lazarus was inspired to write that poem not by the immigration of white Christians, but by the arrival of Jews fleeing the anti-Semitism of Europe!
The real irony is that in previous generations, around the turn of the 20th century, people believed that America should exclude or severely restrict immigration from southern and eastern Europe – the earlier version of Cuccinelli’s racist beliefs would have prevented his own existence! (And mine!) Of course legislation specifically and literally restricted Chinese immigration even before the statue was dedicated!
On the other hand, there is nothing especially racist about refusing immigrants who can’t stand on their own two feet. If he had just stuck to that without bringing Europe into the argument, he’d have been on solid ground. It was when he flipped over his hole card that he inadvertently revealed the racism behind the ostensibly logical policy.
Well, given that the Statue arrived four years after the US Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act forbidding Chinese citizenship after they built the Transcontinental Railroad, he’s not wrong.
My father was old enough to remember a time when Italians were regarded as low-class people who tended toward crime and took jobs as scabs.
What is wrong with people like Cuccinelli, that they cannot realize that having hard-working people come here, people with the initiative and courage to leave where they are and seek out something better in a new place, is an asset to this country, not a liability? Especially people whose families should remember a time when THEY were treated the way Hispanics are now? What kind of flaw in human nature is that?