I didn’t know exactly what to expect when I started watching this interview of Ken Cuccinelli on CNN, but I was thoroughly impressed by the time it was over.
Watch:
CNN's Erin Burnett challenges acting US Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli on the Trump administration's new immigration regulation, saying her grandparents came to America with no education and that the rule would exclude people like her. pic.twitter.com/kyzZLpW5lj
— OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) August 13, 2019
Erin Burnett tries to play ‘gotcha’ with the poem written on the Statue of Liberty, suggesting that the new ‘Public Charge’ rule is contrary to the poem which says we should accept the ‘wretched refuse’ of the world.
Cuccinelli didn’t let her get away with that, explaining that the poem was referring to people coming from a class-based system in Europe where, if they weren’t in the right ‘class’, they were considered to be wretched and refuse.
He then knocked it out of the park by pointing out that the Statue of Liberty poem came one year AFTER the first ‘public charge’ rule was written, which he read to Burnett, saying that people immigrating to America must be able to take care of themselves without becoming a public charge or they would be inadmissible. He then added that in 1903, the year the poem was put on the Statue of Liberty, Congress expanded ‘public charge’ even more.
Floundering, Burnett then tried to suggest her uneducated parents wouldn’t have been able to come to America if the new public charge rule was in place. But Cuccinelli told her that she was just basing that on one point, and that immigration officials consider the entirety of the circumstances of those applying for permanent residence. And he was clear that this didn’t apply to any of our refugee or asylum programs.
Cuccinelli did an excellent job defending the ‘public charge’ rule and you should watch the video above for more.