N amed for the poet whose words adorn the Statue of Liberty, the Emma Lazarus Fund will help legal immigrants attain full participation in American society. In appropriate instances, the Fund will pay the cost of applying for citizenship for legal immigrants. The Fund will also assist community and social service organizations that provide legal immigrants with English-language instruction and other services that help them qualify for citizenship. Finally, both through the courts and through public education campaigns, the Fund will assist organizations conducting efforts concerning the issues of immigration and naturalization. I believe this proud tradition needs to be preserved in order for the United States to survive as a great nation and an open society.
Legal immigrants play by the rules and pull their own weight.
They serve in the military. Denying them the safety net they help pay for is neither necessary nor fair, and it breaks with a long tradition of treating legal immigrants as future citizens who are assets to our country. T he Emma Lazarus Fund is a project of the Open Society Institute, a nonprofit operating and grantmaking foundation established by George Soros in 1993 to promote the development and maintenance of open societies around the world. The Open Society Institute, based in New York, is part of a network of autonomous nonprofit foundations created and funded by Mr. Soros in 25 countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Haiti, South Africa as well as in the United States.