Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

And, when they get here, I’ll ask them to hang tight for just a sec,

Then tie them up in visa paperwork

Till they’re all, like, Wait, should I come in or no?

Please. English isn’t my first language and I’m very tired and huddled.

Send me your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, sure.

But what I’m really saying is, I can’t make any promises.

In fact, some of your masses are gonna need

To huddle where they are for now.

For, like, ninety days at least, so I can think.

And it’s not so much masses I’m talking about.

“Masses” sounds so—

It’s just a significantly smaller group of people I’m looking for.

I’d say definitely feel free to send me your huddled “friend’s-improv-show audience” of people yearning to breathe free. That’d be fine. Or send me a “nonfiction reading at an independent bookstore” ’s worth of huddled people. No problem. But you know how people sometimes say “It’s not a party” when they don’t want things to get out of hand, or for expectations to be too high?

Well, it’s not a party, is what I’m saying—that’s sort of our new slogan.

So don’t feel free to just invite anyone.

But totally send me your “board-game night”-sized groups.

Board-game night is actually a perfect metaphor for America,

Because people like the idea of it more than the actuality.

And it feels like it’s taking forever to end.

Did I make that weird?

Tell you what,

Give me the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

But I’ve gotta do that thing where I let the door close and lock behind me even though I saw your huddled masses approaching, then be, like, “So sorry! Are you here to see someone in the building? Can you call them? I can’t let you in—it’s a security issue.”

And then it’s awkward ’cause we both know it’s based on how you look.

Also, we’re actually not taking any tempest-tost from certain teeming shores right now,

Specifically the shores most likely to produce the tempest-tost.

(Grandfathers who came from late-nineteenth-century Germany, though, are fine.)

But totally still send me them! It’s worth a shot, you know?

So give me these, your refugees, your promising scientists,

And I will keep them in bureaucratic limbo,

Like that movie where Tom Hanks gets stuck in an airport and it’s kinda cute for a while.

Unless your huddled masses have young children or take medication.

Then it won’t be so much a fun zany romp the whole family can enjoy.

“Cast Away,” I think it was called?

Send them to my airports,

And your huddled masses will look around and think,

Surely this is a place of refugees, of those gasping their last hope.

Give me those yearning for freedom, or a place where anyone is welcome,

I will detain them the second they land so they’re like,

Seriously, what the hell is going on? If you’re closed then take down the Open sign, ya know?

Send me your tired, your poor, and in return I will send just _super-_mixed signals.

But, yeah, no, send them and I’ll see what I can do.