Club America, Members Only

One of the consequences of 9/11 is the extended backlash against immigrants, even visitors or folks on work or student visas. Even citizens who display evidence of "otherness."  Some of us have gone back to Joe McCarthy's ways.

 

There is such irony that people whose ancestors came here to flee oppression, seek opportunity, find freedom, find home - they don't want to pass it on. While I don't believe in open borders -- I do believe in the melting pot, in asylum and a pathway to entry and to citizenship. There once was a long negotiated bipartisan immigration bill passed that 45|47 squashed because he wanted to run on the issue. That's bad form. 

This poem dates from 2005 published in A First Tuesday in Wilton an anthology, edited by Rose Drew and Alan Gillot and printed by Stairwell Press. It was then titled The Get Away. 

Club America, Members Only

Outside
=========
a locked gate waiting.
Socked-in, Statue of Liberty's
harbor gone grey.
Ellis Island, your sentimental
push-button displays,
sepia-toned icons, a memory
of distance and desperation,
clutched burlap bundles, dented
suitcases, hand-written name tags,
befuddled seekers. almost home.

Now you welcome

only tourists. Neon bloodies

your halls of remembrance:

"No Vacancy * No Vacancy * No Vacancy"

Close the airports!

Close the Brooklyn Bridge!

The children of the children

of the formerly oppressed

want to seal the borders

with invisible force fields

with infallible alien detection devices

and declare

"CLUB AMERICA -  MEMBERS ONLY!"

So take back your tired, and your

poor, your huddled masses yearning....

Give them a cell

with room service, limited menu,

meticulously kept steel bunks.

STOP - PACK UP!

Fold your love of FREEDOM,

tuck it in.

Fold your sweat up with your dreams,

Forget about your son in Cinncinati.

Do not pass. Do not collect. Go directly. Go back

================

Outside