Immigrations

On the base of the Statue of Liberty you can read this poem:

“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!”

Some how these words ring true to our ears but that is not always the case. We have not always welcomed the people listed in that poem in fact many of them were not welcomed at all. It is a natural tendency to fear large groups of immigrants who stream into our country and work for next to nothing. Well employers love them but the working classes do not. “These people are taking our jobs.”  Is the cry in the streets protesting unbridled immigration.  

There is a litany of down trodden peoples who were the object of jokes and worse out and out violence. If you look in our history the Irish, Poles, Germans,  Jews, Italians, and any Asians were often limited and abused when they arrived. Now it is the Mexicans and Arabs that are feared.

America was settled by people who came from a far country. Even the Native Americans once emigrated from Asia and spread out over the land. My father’s people came for Germany and my mother’s came for Scotland and England to make a home here. Where did your families come from?

Can you welcome with open arms people who are oppressed you are yearning to breathe free?