Trump Team rewrites the Statue of Liberty

AUGUST 13, 2019

Photo: Jens Meyer / The Associated Press

Today, Acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli offered a new take on the poem mounted on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

"Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge," Cuccinelli said during in an interview with NPR's "Morning Edition."

The interview was part of an effort to defend a new Trump administration rule aimed at making it harder for poorer legal immigrants to stay in the U.S.

NBC News' Allan Smith reports:

The [NPR] interview followed the administration's Monday announcement of a rule that would make it more difficult for low-income, legal immigrants who receive public assistance to remain in the country legally. That rule, set to go into effect in mid-October, would require immigrants who apply for a change in their immigration status or those who seek to come to the U.S. legally to prove that they are unlikely to ever need public assistance. The rule can also prevent immigrants who have already received a certain level of public assistance from having their applications approved.

On CNN Tuesday night, Cuccinelli defended his rewrite of the Emma Lazarus poem, saying the words on the Statute of Liberty are actually referring to “people coming from Europe” and “wretched’ didn’t really mean “wretched,” just that they were commoners and not members of the nobility or gentry.

On the 11th Hour, Republican strategist and Trump critic Rick Wilson had this to say:

“This is the American story writ large. Generations after generations... who came here not because we were a race or a single tribe, but because we were a propositional nation-- that if you came here, you can become American...

Ken [Cuccinelli] has adopted the Stephen Miller-Steve Bannon-Donald Trump mode of thinking that immigration should be based... let's be honest about this... this not code for whether they're [immigrants are] coming here with a 401k or not... it's code if people are coming if they're white or not...

This is a disappointing moment.... Traditional conservatism deeply believed in the power of America to create Americans... not a racial or genetic component that people can never have.”

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