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Notes -
Indeed, the name of the Statue of Liberty is “liberty enlightening the world”, and faces outward, to teach other nations the values of America. Lazarus was a Zionist whose family owned slaves, and also a bad poet, so she really should not have a privileged position in dictating American sentiments about immigrants. What’s more, in the inauguration ceremony of the statue, it is repeatedly mentioned that immigrants ought to be of high moral character to be allowed in.
As you write, America was a country of Europeans founding their own European societies within America. This is not what is commonly understood as immigration, but colonizing. Japan did not emigrate to Okinawa, they colonized it. When there is a direct continuation from your homeland to your new home, and you divide almost completely your life from the natives, that is obviously settler colonialism. We talk about Greek colonies and settlements in history, not Greek “immigration”.
The statue faces southeast, in order not to look at New Jersey.
No, seriously, the statue faces the entrance to New York Harbor. It can't really face outwards, because Long Island is in the way.
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