Vera Mukhina, THE sculptor behind the worker and kolkhoz woman sculpture, would’ve probably convinced people to keep it purely for artistic value. She allegedly did it with the “Freedom monument” in Latvia, but the Latvian “Freedom” statue is so ugly I wouldn’t have listened.
The context of it being a gift from a colonizer to a settler-colony makes it clear that the “poor/huddled masses” refers to settlers yearning to be free yeomen farmers and she stands beside the “golden door” to stolen land.