In the Age of Derangement, even the most common sense statements by Republicans that violate lefty dogma lead to lefties trying to defend the indefensible.

Like bringing immigrants to this country who will feed off taxpayers.

The sensible lefty rebuttal to this would be the usual raft of misleading claims about immigrants starting businesses. (Those statistics represent a minority of immigrants, and most of them are Russian Jews and Asians, not the migrants illegally crossing the border to get freebies in LA and Maine.)

Ken Cuccinelli, the USCIS acting director, got the ball rolling by trolling lefties with a rewrite.

Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, was asked by NPR whether the words of Emma Lazarus' “The New Colossus,” inscribed on a bronze tablet exhibited in the museum at the statue's base, remain "part of the American ethos." "They certainly are," Cuccinelli said. "Give me your tired and your poor — who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge." Cuccinelli's comments come after the administration announced Monday a "public charge" regulation allowing federal officials to deny green cards to legal immigrants who have received certain public benefits or who are deemed likely to do so in the future.

Can anyone seriously argue with this?

Emma Lazarus was not proposing that we bring millions of bums to America. The poem's use of "wretched refuse" was always ironic. (A point that both pro and anti-immigration advocates often miss.) The key phrase was always, "yearning to breathe free". Lazarus was depicting America as a place where people came to escape tyranny and build new lives.

The "tired" and "poor" "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" are meant to come to America and stand on their own two feet.

That's the American story, from the English tenant farmer, the Scottish and Irish immigrants, the Germans, the Jews, the Italians, etc who were poor when they left their countries, but built new prosperous lives here. We see how it's meant to work with Asian and Russian immigrants.

Coming to this country poor is an acid test. Many of our ancestors passed that test. It's not an easy one. But it distinguishes those who are willing to work from those who want to vote themselves infinite benefits.

And that's the case with the favorite demographics of the Left. People who will never pay in more than they take out. Whose jobs, even when they get them, will see them earning more in EIC than they pay in taxes, or their actual jobs and educations will be based on affirmative action, will be with the government, and will be a net drain and displacement of Americans.

So of course lefties have rallied to defend them.

They're actually taking the wildly unpopular position that we should be bringing more people to this country to put on welfare.

This doesn't poll well with... anybody. Except wealthy lefties.