This narrative essay recounts struggles over the Statue of Liberty’s symbolic relationship to immigration on the hundredth anniversary of its dedication, in 1986. The Reagan administration, which was actively excluding and deporting immigrants from Central America and the Caribbean, used the occasion to assert American exceptionalism and to celebrate the contributions of past immigrants, while refugee and immigrant advocates insisted that the Statue represented a more universalistic vision of welcome and safety that should not be enclosed by US foreign policy priorities or American nationalist ideology.
