You probably mean the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, which was written a century after the founding of the nation.

The founding fathers weren't shy about writing their ideas down. If you're going to speak of the founding, maybe you can quote the actual words of the actual founding fathers, instead of a poet 100 years later. Where did they say the country was founded as a refuge for asylum-seekers?

Remind me, if you will, who the Pilgrims were?

I didn't know the pilgrims founded the country.

Also ironic you would bring them up since they were very much an "asylum for me, but not for thee" group, which explains all of the religious refugees leaving Massachusetts during the pilgrim's rule.

America is built of and by immigrants.

vs.

No it isn't.

It clearly is - native Americans certainly aren't the dominant people in the US.

> native Americans certainly aren't the dominant people in the US.

“Conquerors” and “immigrants” are meaningfully distinct, and the reason the indigenous people of the continent aren't dominant is at least as much the former as the latter.

You're discounting the fact that most extant native peoples almost certainly displaced other native people by the time the Europeans showed up. To provide a single example, Southern Athabaskans ventured south from Canada and displaced the Pueblo people after Europeans had already started showing up in North America.

Also, "aslyum-seeker" and "immigrant" are two distinct concepts.