Colbar Art

Dear Ms. Hanna,

I'd like to inform you of a current situation dealing with Colbar Art. As you know, the Statue of Liberty means a great deal to us at Colbar Art. For many people of the United States, the Statue of Liberty is a clichÐ"©, just another tourist spot in New York City. However, for most immigrants, the first sight of the statute of liberty brings tears along with hopes for a new life.

As you may know, the founder of Colbar Arts, Ovidiu Colea, immigrated to the U.S. many years ago after a horrible past that included five long years in a Romanian hard-labor camp for trying to flee the communist regime. When he finally escaped, he came to America and worked as a cab driver for about two years. He finally saved enough money to start Colbar Art, a company based out of Long Island, New York that produces up to 80,000 hand crafted replicas of the Statue of Liberty a year.

He now helps other immigrants get a start in their new country by hiring them to design and produce Liberty models. To produce these Liberty models, Colea must pay a royalty to the Liberty Foundation. During his first year of operation, that royalty amounted to $250,000. Though this may seem to be a vast amount of money, Colea continues to produce his Liberty replicas because of the meaning behind them.

The very immigrants that Lady Liberty welcomes to New York are the ones that labor to produce the acrylic and bonded marble statues with a hand-painted patina. Colea insists on keeping all production in the U.S. even though it would cost him a very low price if it were done over seas. His reasoning is simple; Colea refuses to produce the statues in countries "where there is no liberty or Statue of Liberty." By keeping the jobs in the United States, he believes he is doing his share of keeping the American dream alive.

However, the detailed labor