‘Give me your tired, your poor ...’

As a young child, I had to memorize these words, which are inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty. I later learned about the Jews who were denied entry into the country in the run-up to World War II and about the internment of our Japanese citizens during the war.

Still, as the child of immigrants, I continued to believe that poem expressed a fundamental American value, that America was a country that welcomed refugees and immigrants, the place that would take them in when there was nowhere else to go. I also believed that another of our core values was freedom of religion.

Apparently, both those things are no longer true. President Donald Trump has declared that citizens of some Muslimmajority countries, chosen even without regard to their connection with terrorist acts in the U.S., are not welcome here. And he has decided to prioritize Christians for eventual refugee status in the U.S.

Make no mistake, banning Muslims or keeping innocent refugees away will not make our country safer. And banning or detaining people who have put their lives on the line to work with the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan is reprehensible. These acts will make it less likely that other countries will cooperate with us in the struggle against terrorist violence, and they deny us whatever moral authority we might have had. Shame on us.

— Terry Seymour New Haven