To The Reader’s Forum:

Why is our country a joke as former President Trump indicated in his acceptance speech Tuesday night? Our country was created by a teeming mass of immigrants and now we are a joke! I don’t understand.

I thought the Statue of Liberty reflected the values of the US. Have we lost those values and that is why we are now a joke? I am speaking of the values expressed in Emma Lazarus’s poem where she writes,

“With silent lips. ‘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-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'”

Should we send the Statue of Liberty back if these are not our values anymore?

Were the Irish, the Italians, the Polish, the Germans all rapist and criminals like the brown skinned people of Central America? Wasn’t there a Mafia of sort with the Italians, the Irish and the Polish? Yet from 1800 to the present, we seemed to have survived that influx of undesirables. Why is that? What makes them desirable now?

If the Statue of Liberty is not a beacon of hope anymore, you are absolutely correct, America is a joke! We don’t deserve to be the leaders of the free world if we enjoy discriminating and hating people that are different in color and culture from us.

I don’t mean to seem crass, but how will I be able to accept being in heaven when all of God’s children are there, even the ones, we say, are polluting America!

If immigration is bad for America I think American Indians would say Amen to that!

Edward J. Vos

Jamestown