Immigrants are an irreplaceable source of labor for the United States. They are essential for many regional economies, and the support of our aging society over the long term. Immigrants bring vitality and ingenuity to our communities. Despite common belief, they are less likely to commit crimes than native-born residents.
These are readily supported findings. Yet movements are afoot to build an immense wall along our border, deport millions of undocumented residents, ban residents of Muslim-majority countries from visiting us, strictly limit the number of refugees we accept, and now cut our number of new legal immigrants in half. Why do such unwarranted positions persist?
A key part of the answer is the role symbolism plays in politics and culture.
Symbols are powerful, and easily manipulated. Recall how a fascist faction used ancient symbols and a demeaning persona of a Jewish minority in the 1930s to promote brutality in Germany. Think also of how the obelisk and hammer and sickle were used to prompt massive human movements.
Immigration has become the victim of such shifting symbolism. The evolution of the meaning of the Statue of Liberty demonstrates how.
France gave the Statue of Liberty to the United States in 1886 to commemorate the centennial of the Declaration of Independence. Its designer, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, named the statue “Liberty Enlightening the World.” The date, July 4, 1776, is written on the tablet that Lady Liberty holds.
While independence might have been its original signification, that’s not the meaning the Statue of Liberty has held for most Americans who grew up in the 20th century. The statute took on a very different connotation because of a poem written by a Jewish New Yorker named Emma Lazarus (1849-1887). Most of us are familiar with at least part of “The New Colossus”:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows worldwide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “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!
Lazarus wrote this poem in 1883 so it could be auctioned to help pay the cost of constructing the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. The poem was placed in the pedestal in 1903, after which it gained popularity.
Lazarus’s inspiration in writing “The New Colossus” was twofold. She spent time assisting refugees and was deeply moved by their stories. But her thinking was also influenced by Henry George (1839-1897)—a controversial economist.
George’s prominent work, “Progress and Poverty” (1879), argued that all land should be treated as a public good (common property), because its private ownership leads to inequality and an unjust distribution of wealth. These in turn undermine liberty and enslave laborers. Lazarus personally knew Henry George and believed his argument.
So “The New Colossus,” and especially its words, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses” welcoming impoverished immigrants—which became intertwined with the image of the Statue of Liberty—advanced a very different meaning of liberty.
The poem’s reference to the statue’s golden torch at the gateway of New York, is a take on the Colossus of Rhodes—a similarly towering statue with a torch that once stood at the entrance of an ancient harbor on a Greek Island. Lazarus implies that the Statue of Liberty is a reformation of the meaning of liberty signified by the Colossus of Rhodes. Richard Lowery, in his book, “Sabbath and Jubilee” (2000), explains the symbolism of placing torches at the entrances of harbors.
Lowery describes how conquering kings in ancient Mesopotamia freed defeated cities to gain their loyalty and assimilation: “Announcements of liberty typically were signaled by raising a golden torch at the entrance gate of a released city. … The torch announced that this was a duty-free zone, a city or region exempted from taxes, forced labor, and military draft, cleared from debt, and released from debt slavery.”
Lowery claims that the image of the torch at the gateway was borrowed by the book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible. Isaiah 60:1 announces a new era of liberty with the lighting of a torch.
The announcement in Isaiah, however, doesn’t come from a conquering king. Instead, it accompanies the Jubilee year. According to Hebrew prescription in the Bible, on every 50th year, equality in society should be promulgated by redistributing land ownership and dismissing indebted servitude. This scriptural vision of equality and liberty was not lost on a Jewish, progressive social critic like Emma Lazarus.
Here we have the transformation of the Statute of Liberty from a symbol of freedom gained through violent revolution, to a symbol of freedom gained through equality and fair treatment of landless immigrants. And for many generations, Americans highly valued and celebrated immigrants.
But the image of huddled masses could not hold and captivate Americans forever. Other interests transformed the symbolism of the Statue of Liberty.
This transformation began in earnest with the centennial celebration of the Statue of Liberty in 1986. Two public figures loomed large over the celebration: Lee Iacocca, former CEO of Chrysler and a captain of capitalism, who chaired the statue’s restoration committee; and Ronald Reagan, who more than any other president during peacetime, militarized the American economy and mindset.
Consequently, the image of ships carrying huddled masses into New York harbor was displaced by the image of the USS Iowa, a heavily armored battleship. It was from the deck of the Iowa—a place of military prowess—that President Reagan gave his speech on July 4th during the centennial celebration of the Statue of Liberty. A picture that widely made the press had Reagan standing with his wife Nancy under one of the Iowa’s large gun turrets. The Statue of Liberty as a symbol of welcome for immigrants seeking a better life, was also displaced—by an image of American wealth and might.
Fifteen years later, other images of the Statue of Liberty—with smoke billowing from the World Trade Center towers behind it—bolstered the statue’s symbolism of liberty achieved through superior military power.
The perception of immigrants also changed—from people seeking a future in America, into a threat to America’s future. There’s no greater proof of this transformation than our current and unlikely president who exploited this negative reconstruction of the immigrant to gain his office.
Many see Donald Trump as the protector of American identity. I argue that his opposition to immigration betrays it. Immigration is part of the American DNA—figuratively, and literally. Eight signers of the Declaration of Independence, and seven signers of the U.S. Constitution—including Alexander Hamilton—were immigrants.
And if immigration is a disqualifier on who is a true American, then very few of us are. That title uniquely belongs to the descendants of peoples who inhabited this land long before the Europeans that colonized it.
Scott Fina is a resident of Orcutt. Send your thoughts to letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 17-24, 2017.