Once the nation might have empathized with the Chinese immigrants pulled out of the waters off New York City last week. Like generations of previous newcomers, they believed the streets of the U.S. were paved with gold, and so they voluntarily crammed into the filthy hold of a ship for months at sea until it finally foundered off a Long Island beach, drowning six. In many ways they epitomized the "wretched refuse" of teeming foreign shores for whom, in Emma Lazarus' 1883 poem, the Statue of Liberty lifts her lamp beside the Golden Door.
Unfriendly commentators seized on their plight to...
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