“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus

Not like thebrazen giant of Greek fame,

With conqueringlimbs astride from land to land;

Here at oursea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty womanwith a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisonedlightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles.From her beacon-hand

Glows world-widewelcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridgedharbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancientlands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips."Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddledmasses yearning to breathe free,

The wretchedrefuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, thehomeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lampbeside the golden door!"

Address by Senator Ellison D. Smith, South Carolina, April 9, 1924.

I think we nowhave sufficient population in our country for us to shut the door and to breedup a pure, unadulterated American citizenship. I recognize that there is  dangerous lack of distinction between peopleof a certain nationality and the breed of the dog…It is the breed of the dog inwhich I am interested. I would like the members of the Senate to read that bookjust recently published by Madison Grant, thePassing of the Great Race. Thank God we have in America perhaps the largest percentage of anycountry n the world of pure unadulterated Anglo-Saxon stock; certainly thegreatest of any nation in the Nordic breed. It is for the preservation of thatsplendid stock that has characterized us that I would make this not an asylumfor the oppressed of all countries, but a country to assimilate and perfectthat splendid type of manhood that has made America the foremost nation in herprogress and in her power, and yet the youngest of all the nations. I myselfbelieve that the preservation of her institutions depends upon us now takingcounsel with our condition and our experience during the last World War.

Without offense,but with regard to the salvation of our own, let us shut the door…

“Ellis Island”by Joseph Bruchac

Beyond the redbrick of Ellis Island

where the two Slovakchildren

who became mygrandparents

waited the longdays of quarantine,

after leaving thesickness,

the old Empires ofEurope,

a Circle Line shipslips easily

on its way to the island

of the tall woman,green

as dreams offorests and meadows

waiting for thosewho’d worked

a thousand years

yet never ownedtheir own.

Like millions ofothers,

I too come to thisisland,

nine decades theanswerer

of dreams.

Yet only part ofmy blood loves that memory.

Another voicespeaks

of native lands

within thisnation.

Lands invaded

when the earthbecame owned.

Lands of those whofollowed

the changing Moon,

knowledge of theseasons

in their veins.

Chinaman’s Chance from The Heath Anthology of American Literature

It was in theconstruction of the transcontinental railroad that Chinese workers gained theirgreatest fame…Failing to recruit a sufficient crew [of white workers], LelandStanford, president of the line, finally agreed to try out a group of 50Chinese workers in 1865. They provided so industrious and efficient that fiftymore were hired and within two years 12,0-00 of the 13,500 workers on therailroad’s payroll were Chinese. It was they who swung down from cliffs instraw baskets to set, and too often to be blown up by, dynamite charges—thuscoining the phrase, “He didn’t have a Chinaman’s chance.”…Ironically, theirvery efficiency in brining the transcontinental railroad to completion on May 10, 1869, may havehelped stifle other Chinese immigration, for the agitation which culminated inpassage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 began soon after the last railspike was driven.