Good fences make good neighbors.
Der Fueher obviously believes heartily in that old axiom as he is signing into law, today, a bill which authorizes the construction of a 700 mile long fence along the border between the United States and Mexico.
Its cost is not known, although a homeland security spending measure the president signed earlier this month makes a $1.2 billion down payment on the project. The money also can be used for access roads, vehicle barriers, lighting, high-tech equipment and other tools to secure the border.
Mexican officials have criticized the fence. Outgoing Mexican President Vicente Fox, who has spent much of his six years in office lobbying for a new guest worker program and a chance at citizenship for the millions of Mexicans working illegally in the U.S., calls the fence "shameful" and compares it to the Berlin Wall.
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In 1883, celebrating America as the "Mother of Exiles" from whose beacon-hand glows worldwide welcome, Lazarus wrote "The New Colossus" to aid the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund. That sonnet, now inscribed on the pedestal of Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, has America proclaiming:
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 entire poem by Emma Lazarus is:
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!"
Just as Lazarus' poem gave new meaning to the statue, the statue emitted a new ideal for the United States. Liberty did not only mean freedom from the aristocracy of Britain that led the American colonists to the Revolutionary War. Liberty also meant freedom to come to the United States and create a new life without religious and ethnic persecution. Through Larazus' poem, the Statue of Liberty gained a new name: She would now become the Mother of Exiles, torch in hand to lead her new children to American success and happiness.
Israel has it's own fence project. The Israeli High Court approves continuation of security fence today.
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