15 AUG 2019: The acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Ken Cuccinelli, says the famous inscription on the Statue of Liberty welcoming immigrants into the country is about, “people coming from Europe” and that America is looking to receive migrants “who can stand on their own two feet.”

The comments from Cuccinelli, came a day after the Trump administration announced it would seek to deny green cards to migrants who seek Medicaid, food stamps, housing vouchers or other forms of public assistance. The move – and Cuccinelli’s defence of it – prompted an outcry from Democrats and immigration advocates who said the policy would favour wealthier immigrants and disadvantage those from poorer countries in Latin America and Africa.

Cuccinelli said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday night that the Emma Lazarus poem emblazoned on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty referred to “people coming from Europe where they had class-based societies where people were considered wretched if they weren’t in the right class.”

Lazarus’ poem, written in 1883 to raise money to construct the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal and cast in bronze beneath the monument in 1903, served as a beacon to millions of immigrants who crossed past as they first entered the US in New York Harbor. It reads, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”

Cuccinelli was asked earlier Tuesday on NPR whether the words “give me your tired, your poor” were part of the American ethos. Cuccinelli responded: “They certainly are. Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.”

An immigration hardliner he was appointed to the post in June in a temporary capacity, which doesn’t require Senate confirmation.

Immigrant rights groups strongly criticized the Trump administration’s new rules for immigrants receiving public assistance, warning that the changes would scare immigrants away from asking for needed help. And they voiced concern that officials were being given too much authority to decide whether someone is likely to need public assistance in the future.

“This administration finally admitted what we’ve known all along: They think the Statue of Liberty only applies to white people,” tweeted former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic presidential candidate.