I agreed. then refused. I had nothing whatever to say about the statue. But my thoughts turned to that sonnet Emma Lazarus wrote for the original fundraising effort. and it came to me how extraordinarily wrong she was about the immigration of the second half of the nineteenth century. She writes about the Lady standing there by the Golden Door saying. "Give me your tired./Your poor. your huddled masses yearning to breathe free./The wretched refuse of your teeming shore." referring to Europe. "Wretched refuse." I thought. what on earth ever gave her that idea? Because surely this was one of the most selfconfident and capable bunch of people who ever crossed an ocean. All those immigrants at that time paid their own way. knew what they were doing. and did it very well. I looked into her life and found an interesting story. She was the daughter of a welltodo Sephardic family in New York City.
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immigration immigrants