Huddled Masses at Our Shores
Our beloved United States has become polarized! Our Statue of Liberty’s message seems no longer our country’s emphasis! We are more and more given to reject rather than accept refugees, immigrants, “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses at our shores”—values, words and actions we proudly proclaimed prior to this last decade!
What if, in rejecting those huddled masses at our shore, we have silenced a Beethoven or a Mozart among the diverse peoples seeking entrance here? Or what if a poet laureate, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient were among those deported? Or a chess champion who may have drowned close to our shores?
Is it that we continue to think that “they” will deplete our funds, our jobs, our health? Might we imagine how some whom we are rejecting could be the very ones to “make us great again”?
We don’t know where greatness will come from. It seems to me that we deny our own freedom and possibilities when we deny freedom and possibilities to others. Actually, we need diversity! Nationalism is debilitating! Refugees and immigrants throughout our history have been the answer to establishing new directions in these United States!
We create the world we want by the choices we make and the stories by which we live. When will we learn that truth again?
Renee Domeier, OSB
Photo by Paula Nardini on Pexels.