Many, many years ago, when I was a young lad, my mother and her sisters would round up my cousins and sister and me, and we would take a trolley, then the subway, then a boat — ending up on an island filled with trees, grass and families speaking many tongues.

We would picnic under a massive statue, where my mother would read us lines from “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, inscribed at the base of the statue: “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!”

What a pity that the political party currently in power chooses to deny that we are a nation of immigrants. Why are they so afraid?

John Priolo

Pearl City

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