"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," the Statue of Liberty famously proclaims in that historic poem by Emma Lazarus.

What many people don't know is that in an earlier draft of the poem, Lazarus explicitly wrote: "Also Sergei and Maksim. Send them too. They're good. We'll take em."

Two Russians who had reached St. Lawrence Island in Alaska by fishing boat to escape being mobilized into the army have been granted permission to stay in the US. Both men have been released after spending 3 months in custody and will be allowed to work in a few months, writes The Economist.

They took a fishing boat from Russia to Alaska.

Here are the two bold fellows:

Sergei and Maksim — I'm not sure which is which, they both look like either name could fit — have had quite the five-star life since showing up on the Alaskan coast:

They spent months in one large room with 70 other detainees. They ate beans and rice and rice and beans, and read whatever Russian-language books they could get their hands on. Twice a month the librarian delivered new books. "That was a holiday," said Sergei. They devoured the classics: Dostoyevsky, Pushkin and Tolstoy.

Now hold on a second: These guys look old enough to have been born within the actual Soviet Union itself. You're telling me that these guys are dyed-in-the-wool Soviet Ruskies and they haven't read Dostoyevsky yet? I find that hard to believe!

Well, as Kipling once wrote: "What do they know of England, who only England know?" Sometimes you have to leave your home to really find out about it. And these guys worked hard to get to the U.S.:

Then came the gale. Sergei noticed that the vessel was taking on water. The bilge pump whirred constantly. At one point they were being tossed between two walls of water. Sergei closed his eyes, and thought, "I shouldn't be here, this is not a place where any human should be." They survived thanks to Maksim, a deft crewman, who ensured they skirted around the worst of the storm.

That legit sounds harrowing.

But it sounds like it was all worth it, at least by the way these two blokes tell it:

Several hours later, they had outrun the tempest and crossed into American waters. Finally, they could breathe again. During our interview, Sergei glossed over hairy moments with wry humour. Yet when he described seeing St Lawrence for the first time, he paused, momentarily overcome, and quickly wiped away a tear. I asked him what he thought of America. "We knew it was a free country with functioning laws," he said.