Illegal mentioning

Progressives throw a flag on POTUS

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?

Hamlet: Words, words, words.

The president of the United States gave an important speech last week. You may have watched. The State of the Union address has its own little dance, too. Not as coordinated as the macarena, but nearly as annoying: When the president says something that Democrats like, they stand and clap while the Republicans sit still and pout. When the president says something the Republicans like, they stand and shout, while the Democrats look numb and sick.

Sometimes the president will say something that both sides like—something innocuous and patriotic—and everybody stands and claps. Members are signaled on what to do by their leaders standing behind the president.

One of the things the loyal opposition was watching for this night was whether the president would mention the nursing student who was killed by an illegal immigrant in Georgia recently. He did mention her. And almost got her name right.

But what made progressives upset is that the president accurately described her killer as an illegal immigrant. Or, as the president put it, still accurately: “an illegal.”

Several lawmakers told the press after the SOTU address that they didn’t appreciate that part.

An illegal immigrant should not be referred to as an illegal immigrant. That phrase must go down the memory hole. It makes some folks feel doubleplusungood when they see badspeak.

Speaking of Orwell, he could have written what Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois put on social media: “Disappointed that POTUS would use such dehumanizing right-wing rhetoric to speak about immigrants tonight. No human being is illegal.”

The Ministry of Truth couldn’t have put it any better. Hey, they’re only words, right? Big Brother would understand.

The term “illegal immigrant” isn’t allowed in certain quarters any longer— specifically, those quarters debating illegal immigrants. It’s too direct. Too accurate. Too much like plain English. Better to use some euphemism, or, in a pinch, some politically correct gibberish. Like “undocumented worker” or even worse, “out-of-status person.”

Nobody in this country is illegal? Then what are all the illegal ones? Last we heard, there were more than 12 million illegal immigrants here in this country, and thousands coming over the southern border every week. They’re still here, the illegal immigrants, and they’re still illegal.

Somebody—it may have been us—once said that language is the Little Roundtop of any political argument—the decisive ground. Whoever occupies it may hold an unassailable position, or at least shouldn’t give it up without one heckuva fight. (See Gettysburg, 1863.)

This current debate over words, namely two of them, illegal and immigrant, is too important to cede to the other side. Words deserve respect, even reverence. When we allow them to be devalued, the whole language is cheapened, and thought itself coarsened.

Those who read this column regularly know that we’re not exactly anti-immigrant. Heck, that’d be second-cousin to being antiAmerican in this nation of immigrants. There are some folks who’d throw us out of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy for daring to favor a sensible overhaul of our immigration system. Complete with a secure border and a path to citizenship—in that order.

Immigrants come here to work, and the work ethic is as American as Pilgrims and Puritans. And goes back as far. Not that xenophobia isn’t a traditional American trait, too. Didn’t Ben Franklin warn everybody about all those Germans taking over the country?

Then and now, ambitious, hardworking, adventuresome people will flow toward wherever the jobs are as naturally as water flows downhill. This country needs to figure out a way to let those workers work, weed out any bad guys among them, and get these people out of the shadows where they are being preyed upon. And, lest we forget, secure the border. Because the law still needs to be respected and obeyed. La ley es la ley.

Let’s not underestimate the difficulty of the job facing us. But neither let us underestimate the need to solve it. Finally. Or the urgency of the task—for it is a terrible thing to be someone without a home in the world, caught between a country that offers little hope and one where he must live in fear of the police, the border patrol, the overzealous Inspector Javerts on his trail or some informer with a grudge. Or a street gang that knows the victim won’t dare appeal to the cops.

But no decent country would tolerate this broken “system” that condemns millions to live in the shadows. It’s time to fix it. What this country needs now, and has for some time, is a fair, thoughtful, and workable response to the problem of, pardon our language, illegal immigration. Because illegal immigration exists, and calling it something else won’t make it go away.

Only doing something about it will accomplish that.