DeltaV

The Statue of Liberty was never intended to be an invitation for the world to immigrate to America. That's a historical myth. In 1865, French republican Édouard de Laboulaye proposed the monument to celebrate America's republic, its survival after the Civil War, and to inspire republican government in France. When it was dedicated in 1886, President Grover Cleveland never mentioned immigration. Emma Lazarus, a Jewish American poet advocating for Jewish refugees, wrote “The New Colossus” in 1883 to help fund the pedestal. Her poem appeared in the New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian-born Jewish immigrant. Pulitzer later led a newspaper campaign to fund the statue's pedestal in 1885. But the poem wasn't added to the statue until 1903, seventeen years after its dedication, following a campaign by Lazarus's friend Georgina Schuyler, great-granddaughter of Alexander Hamilton. Over the following decades, the monument's meaning shifted from celebrating republican liberty to welcoming immigrants. Today, politicians invoke a poem written a century after America's founding as though it supersedes the Constitution and grants the world a right to immigrate. A poem added in 1903 doesn't rewrite America's founding principles or obligate us to take in the world.