Immigration debate? Huh? Has there been an immigration debate going on? (Um, has anybody broken the news to poor old Emma Lazarus?)

The Staten Island Ferry chugs past Liberty Island in New York Harbor.

"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."
--from "The New Colossus," by Emma Lazarus

I was writing to a friend on another subject entirely, and in the course of my rambling, I had to dig out these famous--or perhaps once-famous?--lines by Emma Lazarus.

I haven't been to the Statue of Liberty since I-don't-know-when, but I see it semi-frequently.

Sometimes I venture down to the Battery, the lower tip of Manhattan Island, just to look out on New York Harbor. When you look out on the harbor, the eye is drawn quickly to the Statue.

A few times a year it's not enough for me to look out on the harbor, I have to get out on it. So I take my version of an ocean voyage: the Staten Island Ferry trip to Staten Island and back, which gives you a sort of drive-by of the Statue. (The trip also suits my budgetary preferences. You used to pay a quarter in one direction only. Now it's totally free.)

A bunch of years ago, after the renovated Ellis Island reception hall was opened to the public, I took the ferry there. The same ferry made a circuit of Ellis and Liberty Islands, but I hadn't left myself that much time, and chose to spend it all on Ellis. I have to confess that what resonated most vividly for me was the episode of the difficult arrival of little Vito Andolini (about to become Vito Corleone) from Sicily in Godfather II.

Nevertheless, I don't have to visit the Statue to think of its famous poetic inscription. I admit that I looked it up to be sure I had it right, but I would have come pretty close if I'd quoted it from memory.

But then, looking at the words on-screen in front of me, I suddenly realized that I can explain why I feel so isolated from what has recently passed for a "debate" on immigration: I haven't heard anybody quote these lines.

We do all know that we Americans are all immigrants here, don't we? I suppose you could argue, based on the submoronic ignorance of Tom Tancredo and the other anti-immigration loonies, that the immigration thing hasn't worked out as well as we like to pretend. Some of the "wretched refuse" still sounds pretty wretched.

As a point of curiosity, does anyone know whether Twitty Tom and the other hate-spewing xenophobes have ever visited the Statue of Liberty? Or ever heard of the Statue of Liberty? For that matter, the proponents of the supposed immigration "reform" bill don't seem to get it either. They seem mostly interested in immigrants as a ready source of cheap labor--a far cry from the promise and hope of the Statue of Liberty.

It used to stand for something. It used to stand for, you know, the idea of America. If somebody wants to talk about that, give me a holler.