My last post, “Nguyen Never Forgets the Long Journey to America“, reminded me of a line from the end of the poem, “The New Colossus,” by nineteenth-century American poet Emma Lazarus. This poem appears on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty, and describes her. In this line, the statue herself is speaking:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Reading it, I was overcome by emotion and tears washed over my eyes. My ancestors, too, reached these shores, landing at Ellis Island. I, too, am free.