Story Behind The Song

This song protests modern American immigration policies. I began writing it in Miami the week after Hurricane Andrew, and I thought it was a sailing song a la Jimmy Buffett. But with sailboats full of Cuban and Haitian refugees washing ashore every week, the story went somewhere else instead. This song was completed years before the Elian Gonzalez controversy; it's strange how life imitates art sometimes.

Song Description

America no longer welcomes the tired, poor huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Lyrics

LIBERTY

VERSE 1:
I'm a pilgrim on the ocean, and I sail across the sea
In a wooden boat that's going to the land of liberty.
And I got no way of knowing, will I reach the other shore?
But I can't live like a prisoner anymore.
Liberty, liberty, liberty.

VERSE 2:
Sailing toward the west horizon, I am free to speak my mind
'Bout the hunger, tears and tyrants in the land I left behind.
I know all about America from the tales that I've been told,
I imagine all the streets are paved with gold.
Liberty, liberty, liberty.

BRIDGE:
The promised land beyond the ocean,
Draws the pilgrim to the sea.
Now the promised land is broken,
Belongs to you, but not to me.
Liberty, Oh-ohh, sweet liberty.

VERSE 3:
When I wash up in the back yard of a palace on Palm Beach,
I am captured by the Coast Guard, and they lock me up for weeks.
I'm tired and poor and yearning, will you let me through the gate?
Or did I arrive a hundred years too late?
Liberty, liberty, liberty.

(REPEAT BRIDGE)

VERSE 4:
We are sailing from Havana, and we sail from Port au Prince,
For the good life in Miami, locked behind a fence.
You say you live in freedom, but you hide behind a wall,
And it doesn't feel like liberty at all.
Liberty, liberty, liberty;
Liberty, liberty, liberty, sweet liberty.