Acosta asked Miller whether the bill went against the traditional American stance on immigration: "The Statue of Liberty says, 'Give me your exhausted, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, ' it doesn't say anything about speaking English or being a computer programmer".
"The New Colossus" by Jewish-American poet Emma Lazarus was written in 1883, as many immigrants were moving to the United States through the port of Ellis Island in NY.
"I have never seen a presidential administration refuse to fully endorse the Statue of Liberty", Colbert said.
The Trump administration's new immigration bill, as CNN's Jim Acosta noted, favors "highly-skilled", English-speaking applicants.
"The poem that you're referring to was added later", he told Mr Acosta.
Miller's freakish response was that while the Statue of Liberty is "a symbol of American liberty lighting the world", the poem was not part of the "original" statue, but was added later.
David Duke, a vocal Trump supporter and former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan has devoted an entire chapter in one of his books to Emma Lazarus, the author of the poem, and the Statue of Liberty.
Arsenal striker Lucas Perez set to leave the Emirates
He has been linked with a return to Deportivo La Coruna , as well as to Premier League returnees, Newcastle United. Newcastle , Deportivo and Fenerbahce are reportedly interested in signing the wantaway striker.
But it's not just about economic sense - consider what the Statue of Liberty symbolizes and the kind of country that Jewish American poet and activist Emma Lazarus envisioned, where all are welcome through "the golden door". Though the poem was written for the auction, by the time the Statue of Liberty was dedicated in 1886, her poem had been largely forgotten. According to Politico, Lazarus' sonnet "New Collosus" was added to the NY monument in 1903 on a plaque, but does not appear on the actual statue itself. It was the brainchild of French historian and abolitionist Édouard René de Laboulaye, and like many monuments, it had a complex genesis. At the Statue of Liberty Museum, "The New Colossus" appears on a plaque.
As the French worked on the statue, the Americans prepared the pedestal, but funds were low. When Americans attack immigrants they are all too often symbolically turning on their own ancestors, who surely would have identified more with the lives of immigrants today than their powerful and privileged descendants.
She imagined it as a symbol of America's renunciation of conquest, empire, and pompous aristocracy. And lift my leg upon your filthy poor.
Even after the poem was placed inside the pedestal, it was several decades before pro-immigrationists in the 1930s seized upon "The New Colossus" to promote their cause. Emma Lazarus would die of cancer in 1887, her poem "The New Colossus" still unknown.
The statue was a gift from France commemorating its alliance with the United States during the American Revolution.
The pair verbally sparred over the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of freedom and what it represents in relation to USA immigration policy.
Comments