Streets Paved With Gold: Immigration and the Image of America

Year 1999, Issue: 9, 17 - 32, 01.04.1999

John J. Grabowski

Abstract

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill reforming the United States’ highly restrictive immigration policy. The site chosen for the ceremony was symbolic—the base of the Statue of Liberty. For Johnson and most Americans the statue was the most appropriate location to enact a bill that liberalized the nation’s immigration law. In the minds of many the Bartholdi statue represented what immigrants expected of America and what America expected of itself. It was the guardian of the “golden door” to a land promising liberty, opportunity, freedom, and refuge. These words were part of the symbolism that surrounded an image of America built around immigration, an image that one might argue is at the core of the way the nation views itself and wishes to be viewed in the late-twentieth century

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