'Give me your tired, your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge,' the Acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director said during an interview with NPR.
Rebecca MorinWASHINGTON – Acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli on Tuesday evening doubled down on his characterization of the famous Emma Lazarus Statue of Liberty sonnet, saying the poem was referring mostly to immigrants coming from Europe.
“Give me your tired, your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge,” he said Tuesday morning during an interview with NPR."That plaque was put on the Statue of Liberty at almost the first time the first public charge law was passed."The actual text of the poem reads: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
"Of course that poem was referring back to people coming from Europe where they had class-based societies, where people were considered wretched if they weren't in the right class," he said. Almost 14 million immigrated to the United States through New York between the late 1800s to the 1920s, and saw the Statue of Liberty as a"welcome," the NPS wrote online, adding"Over time, Liberty emerged as the 'Mother of Exiles,' a symbol of hope to generations of immigrants." The immigrants at the time were mostly coming from Europe.
O'Rourke has repeatedly called Trump racist and has also said he believes the president is a white supremacist, especially since a mass shooting in O'Rourke's hometown of El Paso, Texas, where the alleged shooter was targeting Latinos, according to law enforcement.
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