First read this.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

That is the inscription on the Statue of Liberty written by Emma Lazarus.

It’s been there since 1903. The statue itself was erected in 1886. It was a prefect poem (sonnet) to place on Lady Liberty.

We all take it seriously in America until we are confronted with people trying to obtain entry into this country. Some GOP candidates for president need to read that poem and remember their roots. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are the outstanding leaders of the group that do not want to devise a path to citizenship for the people who prepare their meals, wash their dishes, make their beds, and cut their lawns.

By late Monday, states refusing Syrian refugees included Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.

Have we lost our collective mind? America was built on refugees. They are the people who made this country great. Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase is the grandson of a Greek immigrant. Similarly millions of Americans are the children or grandchildren of immigrants.

So your next door neighbors and the people you see on the streets don’t look like you and maybe they have different religious beliefs but they all – we all – have one thing in common – our families all agree the United States is a country where everyone can work and live at our full potential. Somehow we seem to have forgotten that idea.

It’s time we all started acting like Americans.