Colossal Joke?

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from 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!"

Emma Lazarus, 1883

"We will continue to aggressively patrol the waters surrounding Florida and we ill interdict people trying to illegally enter the United States from the sea. Those who have violated laws will be held accountable in a court of law."

Lt. j.g. Eric Pare, a Coast Guard duty officer July 2007

The huddled masses in Cuba are not allowed to leave Cuba legally. There's no legal way for a slave to leave his master, for a prisoner to leave his prison. Are we going to pretend that Cubans who want to leave Cuba can go into the AIS and ask for a visa out of the blue and be "allowed" to leave?

Let's be clear, to leave Cuba, if you don't want to, or you can't ask permission and open yourself up the repercussions, you have to-you are forced-to do it illegally. You have to risk your life to escape. That's why it's "escape".

Once you successfully escape the island prison, the folks, whose ideals you love so much that you're willing to risk your life for, call you a migrant and send you back to prison because you didn't make it all the way to shore-some cruel and perverse joke. Should you make to shore , you magically become a refugee-an exile, with all the rights and privileges that comes with membership.

Has the inscription on the Mother of Exiles that invites the homeless, tempest-tost to be free and welcomes them to help build the greatest nation in the world become a colossal joke or is the Wet Foot/Dry Foot law making a mockery and a farce out of the inscription on the Lady in the Harbor, Mother of Exiles, the Beacon of Hope and Freedom for mankind?

I don't know about anybody else but every time I see that those who risk their lives and their children's lives to breathe free are return to slavery and repression, it makes me worry that perhaps America has lost a little of its moral compass because the Mother of Exiles can no longer tell the difference between someone who is yearning to breathe free and someone who wants to freely make a buck. And while the latter is not wrong, it is very different from the former.

More on Ms Liberty at Black Sheep of Exile!. Different Circumstances, same conclusion.