Mr. Speaker. I was distressed to read in yesterdays Washington Post that a Member of the other body has suggested that "90 percent of the Vietnamese refugees would be better off going back to their own land." Mr. Speaker. I consider such remarks a direct slap in the face of the Statue of Liberty and the great American tradition which is enunciated on a tablet inside the statues pedestal: Give me your tired. your poor. your huddled masses. yearning to breathe free. the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these. the homeless. tempesttossed. to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door. It is a perverse distortion of our tradition of providing a haven for the refugees from tyrannical regimes to now suggest that they would be better off living under communism. It is especially ironic on the eve of our own American Revolution Bicentennial that this "Nation of immigrants" should be thinking in terms of turning its back on those fleeing persecution and seeking freedom. I cannot believe that on the very eve of our 200th year of independence the vast majority of Americans will embrace this rejection of the very principles on which this Nation was founded. Apparently the slogan "Come Home America" has now been changed by its author to read. "Stay Away From America."
Keywords matched
immigrants refugees