"Inscription on the Statue of Liberty"

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Author: Emma Lazarus

Once that was true - but almost always with strings attached.  

According to some experts, when the Jews came over Peter Stuyvesant met their boats and extracted a promise that they would always take care of their own.  Thus, the service organization B'nai Brith was created.

During Hitler;s regime the boatloads of Jews trying to escape being annihilated were turned away.

Cuban's escaping Castro were allowed to remain if their feet could touch the shore.

Where is the balance?  How do we determine who and how many?   If we had a totally open door policy would we be encouraging millions of people to leave their countries of origin to come here - just the thousands we could readily absorb?

The great compliment of course - never to be forgotten - is no matter how much we may complain about our country - and how much we want to "tweak" it to improve it - it is still the greatest country in the world - the proof being it's where everyone wants to be.

The symbol of the Statue of Liberty

Give me your tired, your poor, your hungry yearning to be free....    I grew up with these words ringing in my ear.  I lived in New York City and the Statue of Liberty was ever-present, as were the hundreds (thousands?) of European immigrants living beside me.

Ronald Reagan said on June 19th, 1989 in his formal statement to the White House (according to former Secretary of labor, Treasury and State George Shultz in the San Jose Mercury News on July 12, 2013:

 "We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people - our strength - from every country and every corner of the world.  And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation.

While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams.  We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow.  Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we're a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy, and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier.

This quality if vital to our future as a nation.  If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost."