America at its best and at its worst

FOR the last century or more America has been the world’s great and largely benign superpower. The country has afforded opportunity and protection to tens of millions of people, millions of them Irish, millions more destitute European economic or war refugees.

For generations Emma Lazarus’ open-armed declaration from almost 150 years ago rang true: “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-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

It was a noble manifesto and its uplifting generosity lives on in the lives of 320m Americans today. Lazarus’ welcome, even at this remove, is a far more humane, unquestioning and generous response than any offered to today’s European migration crisis.