This piece calls out the hypocrisy of a country that was built by immigrants that is actively attempting to close its borders to those seeking safety and freedom. The Statue of Liberty was once a symbol of welcome and friendship has become a symbol of exclusion by being weaponised and barricaded. The message that the world is seeing is “Do Not Enter.”
We are watching history repeat itself as fear, racism, and nationalism dictate who deserves refuge and who is left to suffer. The current attempts to repel citizens to our south is not the first time this has happened in our nation’s history – we saw this happening with Jewish refugees during the Holocaust, the Chinese immigrants banned in the exclusion act, the Japanese Internment, the Hatian refugee crisis, and more recently, the Syrian refugee ban. At the heart of these were fear, prejudice and political rhetoric, causing cruel treatment of people seeking safety. When liberty becomes selective, can it still call itself liberty?
