Are America’s open arms now crossed?

Standing in our New York harbor, a copper statue, “The New Colossus” holds her torch high into the air, a beacon for the homeless and lost. For those who do not know, there is a poem engraved on a plaque in a museum in its base penned by a young Emma Lazarus. Lady Liberty has graced our shores for only 129 years, since 1886. Did you know that she has another name? Emma named the statue “Mother of Exiles,” and of her she writes:

“From her beacon hand glows world-wide welcome. . . . 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 men, women and children fleeing Syria are the “wretched refuse” of whom she speaks, and they are us. The blood flowing in our veins is that of immigrants who fled their homelands and found a new life here. Irish, German, Vietnamese, Polish — our grandparents and great-grandparents came here with nothing, but they knew, when they saw her, that they had come home to America.

We sing, at the end of our national anthem, that we live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. I say let us show our courage, let us be equal to the words of Emma Lazarus, for isn’t it fear that motivates those who want to deny access to those who flee Islamic State?

And if, in the end, our country shuts the door to those fleeing for their lives, then I say, take her down. Unbolt Lady Liberty, piece by piece, and put her in the Smithsonian as a relic to what we used to stand for. And in her place, erect a sign: “No Trespassing!” BIRDIE SCHNEIDER

Columbus