Statue of Liberty

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May 21, 2012 | 2:11 PM | By

Today is Immigrant Day in California – what is it?

Immigrant Day participants in Sacramento, May 2007

It’s not a holiday. Nor does it have anything to do with a 1987 federal proclamation declaring October 28 of that year “National Immigrants Day,” which isn’t a holiday either, but which some have celebrated on that day since.

What’s being referred to today as the 16th annual Immigrant Day is rather a day of activism in Sacramento, what one advocacy site last year described as “a statewide advocacy day organized to champion immigrant integration in our community.”

Advocacy, civil rights, faith and other groups converge the state capitol to rally, and to lobby for legislation that would favorably affect immigrants. Busloads of participants from throughout the state traveled to Sacramento to attend a rally today at the Capitol Building, followed by meetings at legislators’ offices.

The California Immigrant Policy Center, a group involved in the organizing, has this on its website:

Each May for the past 16 years, immigrant communities and supporters from around California have traveled to Sacramento to visit their legislators and raise awareness about the critical issues facing California’s immigrants, who now make up more than a third of the state’s workforce and a quarter of its population.

Up for discussion this year are bills addressing the controversial Secure Communities immigration enforcement program, domestic workers’ rights, religious freedom in the workplace, the children of deportees in the child welfare system, and protecting immigrants from health care fraud.

What about the other Immigrants Day? That one has a story also, although it’s not advocacy- related. In response to the proclamation designating October 28, 1987 National Immigrants Day, a Huntington Park, Calif. tailor and immigrant from Greece set out to make it a big celebration the following year. It may not have taken off to the extent that he’d hoped. But the end result over the years has been a long list of municipalities – many with substantial immigrant populations, Huntington Park included – declaring October 28 Immigrants Day in their cities.

Meanwhile, some have circulated petitions for an official holiday recognizing immigrants. One more curious fact: October 28 is celebrated because it’s the day that the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the government of France, was dedicated in New York Harbor in 1886.

FILED UNDER: California Immigrant Policy Center, Immigrant Day, National Immigrants Day, Statue of Liberty
October 28, 2011 | 9:39 AM | By

‘Give me your tired, your poor’: The Statue of Liberty at 125

Photo by Mr G’s Travels/Flickr (Creative Commons)

On the occasion of the 125th birthday of the Statue of Liberty, it’s only fitting to share the 1883 sonnet by poet Emma Lazarus that’s inscribed on a bronze plaque in the statue’s pedestal, mounted there in 1903.

The poem itself, titled “The New Colossus” (its title refers to the Colossus of Rhodes) has an interesting story. The statue was a gift from the French government, intended to embody the spirit of democracy, not to welcome the ships that at the time carried immigrants from Europe.

It was the immigrants themselves who began associating the statue with freedom and opportunity, wrote Sam Roberts in the New York Times this week, writing letters home about “this wonderful goddess in New York Harbor” they encountered upon arrival. Lazarus, who accepted a commission to write the poem, had visited newly arrived immigrants in shelters. A descendant of Jewish immigrants herself, she was moved by the stories of Russian Jews who had fled persecution, seeking liberty in the United States.

And thus the Statue of Liberty became the patroness of immigrants, an identity crystallized in Lazarus’ poem:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

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!”

The wide-open “golden door” had already begun slowly closing, of course, by the time the poem on the statue was dedicated. A series of early immigration restrictions, starting with the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 and culminating with the Immigration Act of 1924, which imposed tight quotas on who could enter legally, dramatically changed what in the 19th century had been a fairly open-door approach toward immigration. The rest is history.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Politics/Justice, Emma Lazarus, Statue of Liberty