Internationally celebrated, America’s Declaration of Independence resounds throughout the earth, proclaiming to all who will listen the self-evident truth that “all men are created equal.” Under President Lincoln, this historic proposition gave rise to the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, a unique legal mandate that commands no person in this country shall be denied “equal protection of the laws.”

Combining transcendent political principle with sublime rule of law, this extraordinary ethic is personifi ed in the statue of the Goddess Liberty; standing colossal and defiant in Upper New York Bay, her torch ever illuminating the heavens, she announces to all the world, by day and by night, America’s solemn pledge that the tired and poor of distant lands shall, upon reaching these shores, find the elusive, coveted sanctuary heartlessly denied to the by all others.

However, for many years now, in gross breach of this majestic national faith, and on a scale so massive it denies precedent, the American government has routinely, methodically, and with unspeakable cruelty, inflicted acute suffering upon hundreds of thousands of poor misfortunate souls who, hopelessly downcast, naively raised their eyes to the United States, expecting from her People the integrity to fulfill the promise of their open pledge.

Who are these anonymous, unsuspecting victims of American dishonor? They are the poorest, weakest, and most helpless members of our society- the desperate and destitute paupers from other nations who, inexorably impelled by a state of extreme, unimaginable privation, migrate here in courageous disregard of unjust laws that Dr. King, were he alive today, would surely censure with prophetic severity as “morally wrong and sinful.”

Internationally celebrated, America’s Declaration of Independence resounds throughout the earth, proclaiming to all who will listen the self-evident truth that “all men are created equal.” Under President Lincoln, this historic proposition gave rise to the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, a unique legal mandate that commands no person in this country shall be denied “equal protection of the laws.”

Combining transcendent political principle with sublime rule of law, this extraordinary ethic is personifi ed in the statue of the Goddess Liberty; standing colossal and defiant in Upper New York Bay, her torch ever illuminating the heavens, she announces to all the world, by day and by night, America’s solemn pledge that the tired and poor of distant lands shall, upon reaching these shores, find the elusive, coveted sanctuary heartlessly denied to the by all others.

However, for many years now, in gross breach of this majestic national faith, and on a scale so massive it denies precedent, the American government has routinely, methodically, and with unspeakable cruelty, inflicted acute suffering upon hundreds of thousands of poor misfortunate souls who, hopelessly downcast, naively raised their eyes to the United States, expecting from her People the integrity to fulfill the promise of their open pledge.

Who are these anonymous, unsuspecting victims of American dishonor? They are the poorest, weakest, and most helpless members of our society- the desperate and destitute paupers from other nations who, inexorably impelled by a state of extreme, unimaginable privation, migrate here in courageous disregard of unjust laws that Dr. King, were he alive today, would surely censure with prophetic severity as “morally wrong and sinful.”