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I Want To Be An American Essay

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In the heat of the second world war, my grandmother, Maria Pelikan, a Jewish girl born in Austria immigrated to the United States of America as a means of escaping Nazi invasion. She came to America and it became her new home. She settled here. She found home in New York City, started a family, and lived out the rest her life happily. The home is defined as a space in which a person is able to feel comfortable and safe. Home should be a sort of sanctuary for any given person, which means that it will be different for each person. My grandma chose America as her new home because she knew that it would act as a safe place in which she would be liberated from the oppression and hate that threatened her home. America acted as a new home …show more content…
America was a country that was founded on the principle of taking in those who had no place or were persecuted in the places from which they came. Since its founding, America has served as a place that people could always flee to in times of need. Etched into the Statue of Liberty is a poem by a woman named Emma Lazarus entitled “The New Colossus.” In the poem, the Statue of Liberty is described as the “Mother of Exiles” (6). Historically, the mother has served as a nurturing figure in a person’s life, which then allows people to feel comfortable in America when coming from places they could no longer stay. Not only does the statue comfort people by being there, it also calls out to those who are immigrating, saying, “Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/(...)Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me” (10-14). The statue is essentially taking away all the stresses and misfortunes that those traveling to America have endured, making it seem like they have a chance to make it in the New World and give them an opportunity to forget what they have gone through and begin again. Lazarus’ poem makes the Statue into a symbol for comfortability and sanctuary, thus making America a home for those who have lost

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