Ken Cuccinelli just took his racist interpretation of the Statue of Liberty poem to another level
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) was roundly criticized for comments he made Tuesday on NPR suggesting that the Statue of Liberty’s poem was only meant to welcome immigrants “who can stand on their own two feet.”
Tuesday evening, he doubled down by suggesting the poem only applied to “people coming from Europe, where they had class-based societies.”
CNN host Erin Burnett was grilling Cuccinelli about his earlier remarks, noting that the Emma Lazarus poem The New Colossus , written in 1883 and inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in 1903, specifically describes people who have nothing.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” the poem excerpt reads, “the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
It does not refer to people who can “stand on their own two feet,” as Cuccinelli had said earlier in the day.
Burnett asked Cuccinelli what he believed America stood for. Cuccinelli responded that the poem only referred to class-based societies in Europe, “where people were considered ‘wretched’ if they weren’t in the right class.”
He justified his reinterpretation claiming other laws passed in the early 20th century were similar to the new public charge rule the Trump administration is imposing, which limits legal immigrants from receiving any kind of public assistance.
Burnett noted that under the new rules, her own grandfather would not have been able to come to the United States.
Cuccinelli is not the first Trump official to try to distort The New Colossus in an attempt to justify the administration’s xenophobic immigration policies. Senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, the architect of all of these anti-immigration efforts, tried to downplay the significance of the poem two years ago because the poem was only added later, decades after the statue’s construction had completed.
In August 2017, Miller was defending his proposal to restrict immigration to only those who speak English fluently. CNN’s Jim Acosta asked him whether this comported with Lazarus’ words about how welcoming the country should be. “The poem that you’re referring to, that was added later, is not actually a part of the original Statue of Liberty,” Miller responded.
While it’s technically true that the plaque bearing an excerpt of the poem was only added in 1903, the poem was composed in 1883 as part of the original fundraising efforts for the pedestal of the statue. The pedestal was only completed in 1886, following which the statue was assembled and then dedicated that same year.
Many white supremacists, including former KKK grand wizard David Duke and neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, have likewise criticized the poem. Duke believes Lazarus was “anxious to turn America into a refuge for the castoffs of the world,” while Spencer once described the inscription as embodying “ugliness, weakness, and deformity.”
By admitting that he believed the invitation to immigrants only applies to Europeans, Cuccinelli was saying the quiet part out loud — that Trump’s immigration policy is designed to institutionalize racism.
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“Give me your somewhat tired but still very energetic, your poorest rich people, your sparsely huddled cliques yearning to let their money make more money, refuse the wretched off our teeming shores. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to anywhere but here. Quick! Hide! I extinguish my lamp beside the golden door so no one else can get in!” - The Trump Doctrine
We don't need other places problems
Did trmp's mother have a sponsor or a job when she came to America?
No
but unfortunately,
she had a functioning reproduction system, that is
hopefully,
never reproduced
But it did reproduce....much to our dismay
dismay,
June,
& Julyin F you B thinkin that far too many were
not produced, with the shallow
abnormal disability, to reason beyond the easy X cuses "litres" would use , via quarts, and N E utter sorts,
N dis ability
to change the "make up" of our Country, of immigrants, granted less and less, to keep more and more, for the few to few, White ,001% crew, of thrown overboard logic, as U noticed during the recent cold ICE raids,
how many EMPLOYERS were arrested ?
WHo is benefitting from illegals doing the jobs todays America, thinks are below them...
not the masses being manipulated to hate "different" peep wholes
they can't even see, as it a piers moore, than their vision can encompass, for when a convex lens concaves in, so many are left
out
in the cold ICE
...
speaking of cold ice, get me a fckn beer , bar keep, i got DRINKIN to do
b 4 i sleep
oh she did,
N it's what she Spit
that should have US All give a $hit
Republicans happy to throw the Constitution and the Statue of Liberty under the bus rather than admit they failed on immigration over the last 50 years. What did Reagan do? What did Bush do? What did every Republican border state do? NOTHING. Republicans supported Amnesty to appease Republican wealthy donors who employ and exploit immigrant labor.
Maybe Jan Brewer could have taken her finger out of Pres Obama's face long enough to get something done.
I watched the video. If people are trying to turn what was said into the idea that Cuccinelli thinks immigrants should only come from Europe, that is not what he said.
i didn't,
so what was he ACTUALLY trying to say, ?
please do inform US les enlightened .
I wish I could say it simply, but it's so nuanced, I can't help but be wordy. Apologies.
So anyway the seed says this:
He was talking about the increasing effort to bring in immigrants who won't be on the public dole in any way - something we have already done for years, though arguably to a limited extent. He was not talking about what nationality or ethnicity of people should be allowed in.
He was saying that when the poem went up on the Statue of Liberty there was already a sentiment at that time that immigrants should not be a financial burden on society. (Of course that wasn't such a big deal in the 1800s, before welfare programs)
As partial support for this idea, he said Emma Lazarus (the poet) was referencing the class system in Europe. Maybe she was? I have no idea and I don't know how he would know that.
Anyway, his interpretation was that the term "wretched refuse" referred to people who were perceived in Europe as being in the wrong class - his point being that America welcomed all classes of people to immigrate (including those thought of as "wretched" in Europe) but though we didn't want people who weren't going to support themselves financially.
He never said anything like the invitation to immigrants extends only to Europeans. He was contrasting social status and financial stability. Ethnicity and/or race or nationality had nothing to do with it.
Nobody wants a bunch of freeloaders coming here to abuse our safety net sysytems, but,
it's been my experience, that these "freeloaders" outwork the fck out of young Americans who believe the world owes them something, because ...
they are American ??? The World owes them nothing, they've proven to be lazy overmedicated stupid fricken generations of kids, whom feel entitles, due to our society, which in my opinion, entitled them to feel that way.
.
I believe your interpretation of his inferred intent, is far too generous, again, just my opine, now, how bout some more wine ?
Very often, that's true.
I don't believe I'm trying to "interpret" anything. I'm just repeating what the guy said. It's the writer of the article accusing him of racism who is doing the interpreting.
I'm sorry, but there was nothing "nuanced" about his statement. He made the new Trump doctrine very easy to understand. It was, in its simplest form "Sorry Suckers! We got here first and there's no more room, especially for you poor brown people! So fornicate off!".
It was specially tailored for those lazy piece of trash white supremacists and white nationalists who have had their wife beaters in a bunch over what they imagined was an attack on their ignorant "white culture".
If you have to completely invent words and phrasing to make claims about what someone was saying, you might be full of shit.
Come back to me when you're ready to discuss what the man actually said.
It's been there 116 years, but now we need to change it because Trump hates people with brown skin?
Trump, with all due respect, (none), go fuck yourself you ignorant bottom feeding piece of whale shit.
Typical leftist hate filled post because the president enforces US law rather than a silly poem that has no relevance to law
US immigration law REQUIRES immigrants and or sponsors to certify that they will not need social welfare benefits. All the Trump Administration is doing is to actually enforcing laws passed by Congress.
that is the core of this hatred by the left. Unlike Establishment Republicans, Trump actually carries out these laws that the Democrats passed but with a wink and a nod that no president would enforce them
I’ve been through this process so I have first hand knowledge
"core of this hatred by the left." The vinyl continues to skip.
So you don't believe in American values? How shocking.
Enforcing US law IS an American value
Strict immigration IS an American value, not some poem.
Founders and past presidents on immigration held strict views on immigration quite different from the open borders, welfare state left
In a 1790 House debate on naturalization, James Madison opined: “It is no doubt very desirable that we should hold out as many inducements as possible for the worthy part of mankind to come and settle amongst us, and throw their fortunes into a common lot with ours. But why is this desirable?”
Not merely to swell the catalogue of people. No, sir, it is to increase the wealth and strength of the community; and those who acquire the rights of citizenship, without adding to the strength or wealth of the community are not the people we are in want of.”
Hamilton, Alexander
Founding father
"The opinion advanced [by Jefferson,] is undoubtedly correct, that foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity, and to its particular customs and manners. They will also entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived; or, if they should be led hither from a preference to ours, how extremely unlikely is it that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, [italics in original] so essential to real republicanism? There may, as to particular individuals, and at particular times, be occasional exceptions to these remarks, yet such is the general rule. The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all-important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency."
("Examinations of Jefferson's Message to Congress of December 7th, 1801," Jan. 12, 1802)
Thomas Jefferson
"Yet from such [absolute monarchies], we are to expect the greatest number of emigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. Their principles with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us in the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass."
("Notes on Virginia," 1782)
Washington, George
First President, founding father
"My opinion, with respect to emigration, is that except of useful mechanics and some particular descriptions of men or professions, there is no need of encouragement, while the policy or advantage of its taking place in a body...may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the Language, habits, and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them."
(Letter to John Adams, Nov. 15, 1794)
John Adams, Former President, founding father
(Referring to applicants for public office)
"Among the number of applications..., cannot we find an American capable and worthy of the trust? ...Why should we take the bread out of the mouths of our own children and give it to strangers?"
(Letter to Sec. State John Marshall, Aug. 14, 1800)
Franklin, Benjamin
Founding father
"The importation of foreigners into a country that has as many inhabitants as the present employments and provisions for subsistence will bear, will be in the end no increase of people, unless the new comers have more industry and frugality than the natives, and then they will provide more subsistence, and increase in the country; but they will gradually eat the natives out. Nor is it necessary to bring in foreigners to fill up any occasional vacancy in a country for such vacancy will soon be filled by natural generation."
("Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind and the Peopling of Countries," 1751)
Coolidge, Calvin
Former President
"American institutions rest solely on good citizenship. They were created by people who had a background of self-government. New arrivals should be limited to our capacity to absorb them into the ranks of good citizenship. America must be kept American. For this purpose, it is necessary to continue a policy of restricted immigration. It would lie well to make such immigration of a selective nature with some inspection at the source, and based either on a prior census or upon the record of naturalization. Either method would insure the admission of those with the largest capacity and best intention of becoming citizens. I am convinced that our present economic and social conditions warrant a limitation of those to be admitted. We should find additional safety in a law requiring the immediate registration of all aliens. Those who do not want to be partakers of the American spirit ought not to settle in America."
(First Message to Congress, December 1923)
Dred Scott decision was an American value?