A political cartoon entitled “The Proposed Emigrant Dumping Site” from Judge Magazine, March 22, 1890. National Park Service, Statue of Liberty NM
Connections drawn between the Statue of Liberty and immigration were not
always positive. Nativists (Americans who opposed immigration) linked
the Statue to immigration most starkly in political cartoons critiquing
foreigners' threats to American liberties and values. They portrayed the
monument as a symbol of a nation besieged by pollution, housing
shortages, disease, and the onslaught of anarchists, communists, and
other alleged subversives. Such images appeared mainly in middle-class
popular magazines. They appeared in response to proposed increases in
New York's immigrant processing capacity or in connection to specific
political campaigns. When a new immigrant processing station was
proposed on Bedloe's Island in 1890, a cartoon in Judge
depicted the Statue as "the future emigrant lodging house." Expressing
fears about the Statue's literal desecration by newcomers, as well as
fears about immigrants' threat to the liberty it represented, the
cartoon showed the monument encumbered by a tenement-style fire escape
and clothesline. That same year, Judge published a scathing
image of a sneering Statue raising her robe to protect it from the
newcomers "European Garbage ships" dumped at her feet.
