“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

She told me to come. To dream. To work. To build.
To chase a promise whispered from the New York harbor.
I heard her there, standing on my raft, the wind thick with salt and hope.

They said we were welcome.
But the welcome mat was worn thin by broken invitations.
The doors opened with suspicion.
The air, the one we were told we could finally breathe, came thick with questions:

Where are you from? No, where are you really from?

I was just a boy when I read those words carved into Liberty’s base.
I thought they were meant for me.
That America, la yuma, for all its noise and history and pride, had room for a tired immigrant kid with too many dreams and a suitcase full of silence.

But I’ve learned since then:
Here, they welcome the idea of us, not the reality.
They cradle the myth and harvest our cheap labor, but never our bodies.
Never our names.

They say we are the backbone of this country.
But right now, it feels more like we are its burden.
They say we built the railroads, picked the fields, cleaned the houses, cared for their children.
But they never meant for us to stay.
Never meant for us to speak too loudly,
to vote,
to own property,
to demand to be seen.

We’re always too much or not enough.
Too brown, too loud, too foreign, too illegal.
They love our food but not our faces.
Our labor, but not our legacy.

And we are not the first.

The Irish were “drunks.”
The Italians were “mobsters.”
The Chinese were “diseased.”
The Jews were “schemers.”
And now we are the “invaders.”

The faces change.
But the fear stays the same.
And yet…..we stay.
We work.
We love.

Me?
I’m an immigrant who did everything they told me to.
I learned the language. Paid the taxes. Walked the line.
I kept my head down when it was safer and raised it when it was time to fight.

I believed them.
Believed that if I worked hard enough, played by their rules,
I would stop feeling like a guest in a house I helped build.

But the truth is I still check myself before speaking Spanish in public.
Still tone it down to match their whiteness.
Still wonder if I’m being too ethnic, too visible, too…..much.

I carry my story like a second skin.
Visible to some, invisible to others, heavy only to me.

So yes, I am tired.
But not broken.
I am poor in patience, not in power.
And if I am huddled, it is not in fear.

It is in resistance,
shoulder to shoulder with those who came before me.

We are not here because you gave us permission.
We are here because this land is stitched with the labor of people like me and every immigrant before me.

Because your copper statue raised her torch and dared us to believe.
So we did.

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

You called for us and we came.
Not to beg.
To build.
To rise.