Why has there never been a national referendum in the United States on immigration policy?
In so many words, Emma is showing us the answer: her image of the “Mother of Exiles” standing at our gates, inviting the refuse of the world to enter in. Who is this “Mother of Exiles”? Who put that damned statue outside our harbor and called it the “golden door”? A harbor is a place of refuge, but not a permanent abode. The “golden door” is something altogether different. Is there an intentional twist of poetic irony in all of this, something like the fabled Trojan Horse, but infinitely more malevolent? Maybe we are the bigger fools, to have let someone else give away our homeland. To whom and for what? We do know that Emma Lazarus was a Jewess and a committed Zionist, her father a wealthy New York sugar refiner (which industry still employs the lowest-paid workers in the world). Who else could this “New Colossus” – this “Mother of Exiles” – be than the Golah, the “Deserted Wife” of Isaiah, beckoning her children to follow, and to “set firm their stakes”. She is also the Jew standing
