The Trump administration last week rolled out harsh new federal rules to make it much harder for immigrants to get a green card. And, while they were at it, rewrote the awe-inspiring poem etched on the base of the Statue of Liberty by Emma Lazarus — the one that has embraced generations of immigrants to America.
“Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge,” Ken Cuccinelli, acting head of Citizenship and Immigration Services, told NPR last Tuesday in responding to questions about the new rules. Thankfully, several states, including California, are challenging the new rules, which go into effect Oct. 15. Florida isn’t, though it should team up with the other states.
Under the new rules, immigrants who have used a government benefit, such as Medicaid, food stamps, housing vouchers or food stamps, to name a few, could be denied a green card. Enforcing such rules would put an end to the American Dream for future immigrants.
Cuccinelli dug an even deeper hole that same day when he told CNN’s Erin Burnett that the Lazarus poem was not about immigrants from around the globe but those “people coming from Europe.”
Make no mistake, the new rules and Cuccinelli’s insulting and xenophobic remarks serve as more reminders that President Trump and his cold-hearted administration want to admit as few new immigrants as possible into the country, and are only interested in those immigrants who are white and wealthy.
That message is especially hurtful in Florida, where one in five residents is foreign-born, including myself. My family came to this country in the early 1960s from Chile. My grandfather came first in 1961 and later petitioned to bring his wife, two teenage daughters and one baby grandson.
If Trump were president then, I seriously doubt that my extended family, which included a teenage mom, could have gotten approved for green cards. After all, my grandfather had embarked on a new life in a new country and initially worked low-paying jobs, so we were likely going to become a “public charge.” We, in fact, collected food stamps and welfare for about two years, to make ends meet. It helped us get a foothold in our new adopted country.
But, by 1971, we had bought a house in northern Virginia and our seven-member extended family (my younger sister was born in the U.S.) included three working taxpayers (my grandfather, mother and aunt). My grandmother stayed at home taking care of her two grandchildren.
We would spend the next 50 years and counting paying tens of thousands of dollars in property, income and sales taxes. By the mid-1980s, six of seven extended family members were working and paying taxes.
Our story is much like that of immigrants dating back to those who made their way through Ellis Island. With little money in their pockets and speaking little English, these immigrants helped our nation grow and prosper.
Lazarus, who penned her powerful poem in 1883, ended it with the following message to the world:
“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-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Today’s immigrants deserve the same opportunity afforded tens of millions of earlier immigrants. Let’s keep the lamp lifted and let’s keep open the golden door.
Sergio R. Bustos is the South Florida Sun Sentinel’s deputy opinion editor.
