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realcoolhand -> RE: Statue of Liberty (5/28/2010 3:56:54 AM)
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Elsibella, first up I'd like to say that I appreciate how you're holding fast to the substance of the conversation, even in the face of some pretty vicious, personal rhetoric.
As for the inscription, it's almost ironic looking back. Not in the sense of "heh, sure," but in the sense that it was true on so many levels. It seems plain that the poem was meant to be as apirational then as it is today. The idea that United States is a city on a hill, and a beacon of hope for the rest of the world, is both a little bit presumptuous and, historically, one of the best features of the American personality. (Footnote 1: I use the term "American" in the narrow sense, understanding that in the Western hemisphere we are all Americans.)
That said, it's interesting to me that the poem is titled "The New Colossus," which I did not know, and drew parallels between the United States and Rome. Rome, historically, found security through expansion (until it didn't anymore, it's mercenary armies turned on their Roman masters, and the political structure disintegrated, leaving only an important cultural heritage). The Roman kingdom gave way to the Roman "republic" with the confederation of 7 tribes in the Tiber region in Central Italy, the Roman Empire when that confederation conquered the Etruscans in Tuscan, then Sicily, an overseas empire when Rome fought the Punic wars and conquered Iberia and North Africa to protect it's economic interests in shipping throughout the Mediterranean, then the Aegean with the conquest of Greece and Dalmatia.
At every stage of expansion, the "Romans" (the term was before long of political rather than ethnic significance) held their gains and grew their armies by granting citizenship to conquered peoples willing to assimilate into the Roman political and cultural structure. And every period of expansion was followed by yet another period of expansion to secure Rome's economic interests at the margins.
Likewise, the United States has historically traded citizenship for assistance in it's expansion. The statute was donated, dedicated, and inscribed during the period of "manifest destiny," and the immigrants who took up our nation on that offer were sent West to secure the early American dream of a bi-costal nation. To the rest of the world, they were "poor, tired, . . . huddled masses," but to us they were the avant garde of the "American century" (provided they moved West; when they stayed in the Eastern cities, we rioted).
Today, the expansion we're interested in is not geographical, but economic, political, and cultural, and we've restricted immigration largely to those immigrants we need to accomplish our ends. The H-1B program is used to fuel America's economic growth; student visas and tourist visas are used to ensure that foreign citizens are exposed to, or indoctrinated with depending on how you view it, American political and cultural values through cultural exposure and high-quality education.
At the margins of unskilled labor, where needs are more flexible and workers more fungible, we turn a blind eye to illegal immigration. The unintended consequence (which would probably be intended by cynics were they to slow down and think about it) (Footnote 2: I hate cynics in the contemporary sense. Realism looks around and says "everyone's an asshole; the only way to make a better world is to be a better man." Cynicism looks around and says "everyone's an asshole, so it's alright that I'm an asshole too.") is that American businesses can get cheap labor when they need it, and arrest that cheap labor and march it to the border when they don't. Thus the issue is not really one of nationality, or even legal status, and certainly not (if we're all going to be winners) one of race. It's an issue of class, and the tension between the economic interests of the capital class--which benefits from a flexible pool of cheap labor--and the labor class--which benefits from a fixed pool of scarce and, therefore, expensive labor.
My preference would be to eliminate personal subsidies on the public nickel (i.e., food stamps and welfare payments), strengthen public goods (such as community gardens and free education at ALL levels, which would allow flexibility to those of us in the labor force without incentivizing long periods of unemployment) and open the boarders to let the market do its work. Markets tend to diffuse racial, national, and ethnic tensions because, the better and more EXPLICITLY they funciton, the more we all see we need one another (capital needs labor and vice versa), and the more we each see that every other is an opportunity to cooperate for mutual benefit, rather than a threat to our own economic security.
Edited to add footnote 2.
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