For Bastille Day

14Jul08

“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,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

These words, from “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, are engraved on a tablet within the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. They bespeak an idealism so far removed from the experience of contemporary immigrants to America, that one wonders if it might not be time for the country to forfeit Lady Liberty – perhaps send her back to France in pieces, on a boat.

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