The poem on the Statue of Liberty monument does not mandate endless immigration to the United States, former Kansas Secretary of State and U.S. Senate candidate Kris Kobach says.

This week, President Trump’s administration announced the upcoming implementation of the “Public Charge” rule whereby welfare-dependent foreign nationals will be less likely to be allowed to permanently resettle in the U.S. as they burden American taxpayers with billions in annual costs.

Elected Democrats and media pundits have routinely claimed that the U.S. can not implement immigration controls because of a poem emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty.

In an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Daily, Kobach detailed how the poem does not dictate or mandate national immigration law and how the political left has falsely claimed that the exclusion of foreign welfare-seekers in immigration is unprecedented.

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“The left has used this poem … to try to argue for open borders and its not that at all. The poem is coming from the 1880s, 1890s. The ‘tired, the poor, the hungry yearning to breathe free,’ they’re coming to a United State, that was very different,” Kobach said. “They were not coming to a welfare state and they were coming legally … there were very strict laws in place in the 1880s, actually at about the same time, that put restrictions on people coming in, including the public charge doctrine — that is you were likely to become … someone the state had to support rather, you were told to leave, you were excluded at the entry point.”

“The other thing is that they were not coming into a welfare state, that is the biggest difference,” Kobach continued. “Right now, we have a system … are coming illegally to a welfare state and that is causing a huge burden on the taxpayer. There was no welfare state in the 1880s, 1890s, and so this notion that ‘This is applicable today, everyone should come right in if you’re tired, hungry, or poor.’ They’re coming into a welfare state. As Milton Friedman said, you can’t have open immigration and a welfare state.”

Kobach told the story of a U.S. Border Patrol official who was recently asked by a migrant arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border where she could obtain an EBT card, otherwise known as food stamps.

“This lady says, ‘Where do I get my free food card? Where do I get my paper to get the free food card?'” Kobach said. “Word had gotten around among the incoming illegal aliens that you come to America and they give you a free food stamps card.”

“National policy by poetry by the Democrats. It’s ridiculous,” Kobach said. “In every immigration regulation, every immigration law should be based in the national interest of the U.S. citizens and those interests are economic and security and a whole host other things. It’s just ridiculous … Just like your home needs a door and walls, a nation needs a door and walls.”

The Public Charge rule is set to serve as a billion-dollar tax cut for American taxpayers to the sum of nearly $60 billion a year, as Breitbart News has noted. This is the amount taxpayers spend every year on paying for the welfare, crime, and schooling costs of the country’s mass importation of 1.5 million new, mostly low-skilled legal immigrants.

The most recent study by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) notes that about 63 percent of noncitizen households in the U.S. use at least one form of taxpayer-funded welfare, while only about 35 percent of native-born American households are on welfare. This means that noncitizen households use nearly twice as much welfare as native-born American households.

Currently, there is an estimated record high of 44.5 million foreign-born residents living in the U.S. This is nearly quadruple the immigrant population in 2000. The vast majority of those arriving in the country every year are low-skilled legal immigrants who compete against working and middle-class Americans for jobs.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.