LADY LIBERTY REVISITED

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teaming shores,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door
– Lady Liberty

As I understand that inspiring poem, I see no mention of cartels, rapists, criminals, and other human refuse. They, of course, are an extreme minority within the ranks of immigrants crossing the border. But the immediate and potentially future consequences of that massive crossing is like opening Pandora’s Box. Displaced people, especially unattended children, are in tentative and hurried custody. And what about criminals who successfully disappear into the United States? And the host of unforeseen complications that attend mass international movements.

Yet, at the cusp of a midterm election runoff on the 8th of November, President Biden opened the southern border to migrants who then began a mass crossover of the Rio Grande in huge numbers and continues to do so now, in the middle of December…and still counting. Every day, there are television images of river crossings, along with the activity at nearby crowded shelters.

President Biden has been asked the question, “What about the border?” He replied, “There are more important things going on.” He didn’t offer any examples of what some of those ‘more important things’ might be. He is not the only–if not the most important government official–who dodges questions about the volatile situation. Suddenly, there is a tide of homeless and jobless people who do not know the language in what, to them, is a foreign country; small and mega cities which are short on housing (e.g., a luxury hotel is known to have been forced to house aliens); bussing migrants to large cities, and a host of other urban upheavals.

Political differences are exacerbated as well. For an extreme example, there is the bussing issue. Governor Ron DeSantis had immigrants bussed to Martha’s Vineyard. This was openly an act to make a definitive point about the floodgate of immigrants. There is forced justification for that act because the placement of immigrants should not be based on the southern segment of the United States merely because the southern sector happens to be the closet entry to the United States from the south. There followed the spectacle of settled inhabitants of Martha’s Vineyard slumming or pretending that the migrants were welcomed.

Lady Liberty would shed tears were she not made of copper.