I am very close to your age and I was taught that. That’s literally the inscription on the Statue of Liberty. Sounds like someone tried to brainwash you.

The inscription on the Statue of Liberty is the famous poem “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus. Written in 1883, it was mounted on a bronze plaque inside the statue’s pedestal in 1903. The most famous lines from the poem are:

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”