”
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-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside
the golden door.
”
From
”
The New Colossus,
”
poem by Emma Lazarus, engraved on the Statue of Liberty.
So strong is the nativist tide that has gripped a significant
portion of Americans over the last few years that it’s almost as if
some activists want to rip those words right off the Statue of
Liberty.
“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-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” From “The New Colossus,” poem by Emma Lazarus, engraved on the Statue of Liberty.
So strong is the nativist tide that has gripped a significant portion of Americans over the last few years that it’s almost as if some activists want to rip those words right off the Statue of Liberty.
For the masses of mostly Latino immigrants, legal and illegal, pouring steadily into America each day represent today’s version of the 19th Century tired, poor, huddled, wretched refuse that Lazarus and some of America welcomed when those 19th Century words were written.
There are, of course, legitimate questions over industrial job losses caused by the North American Free Trade Agreement and other new border-opening treaties.
But the outrage over illegal immigration has gone far beyond those questions, entering the realm of hate. The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups more closely than any other organization, reports that fully 888 hate groups are now active around the nation, 80 of them operating in California. That’s a growth of 5 percent nationally from the number of groups operating in 2006 and far above the 602 the center tracked in 2000. The number of hate groups active in California rose by a startling 27 percent in 2007 and another 19 percent this year, the center reports. (For a detailed list, go to
