I've taken to using "unauthorized immigrant", in order to avoid both the pitfalls of affirming an "obfuscating euphemism" and of triggering an autopilot reaction to "illegal immigrant". Nobody has had an immediate "No human being is unauthorized" reaction, derailing rational discussion.
I agreed with your basic stance until this post prompted me to reconsider. I still don't have a strong feeling, but the thing that gives me doubt is that I failed to think of a single other case where we say someone is an "illegal X" for any other crime.
Some crimes have separate words as a descriptor, such as "murderer".
Sometimes the word illegal is applied to a different object ("illegal firearm").
But I can't think of any phrase like "illegal driver", which makes me think that "illegal immigrant" actually is an outlier phrase.
I'm not claiming this is a proof you shouldn't use the phrase, just that it makes it more likely that the objectors have a core of a point, even if they've failed to articulate it well.
This is really good pushback! Perhaps the distinction here is though the specific act of migration only happened once, the continued presence is the so-called 'sin'. Accordingly, the label attaches indefinitely for as long as the "illegal" presence does.
There are two ways we can go from here. One is to acknowledge that negative indefinite labels within the legal realm tend to be very negative (felon, sex offender, etc.). The other is to recognize that maybe immigration presents unique circumstances that justify the indefinite label. Your comment made me think that maybe there's more to the impugning concern than I previously realized. Either way however, it wouldn't support substituting a vaguer or more ambiguous term in its stead, like "undocumented".
Well done: attacking the language used in the mainstream is a great path out of this simulation we've built around ourselves over the last several decades.
I'm curious how anyone can be an anarchist but it seems particularly odd given your advocacy of 100% open borders - Surely, in the USA at least, this would result in pitched gun battles on the US/Mexican border and the mass lynching of any immigrants seen as "taking our jobs".
The Schengen Area in Europe has open borders between several sovereign nations. I don't understand where this prediction of gun battles and lynchings comes from.
Anarchism for me is an aspiration towards reducing the role of the state (and other organs of authority) in many areas, eventually towards zero. There are some functions I concede cannot be practically eliminated (at least not yet) such as police.
You made a prediction and I didn't know what the prediction was based on, so I looked for parallel situations. "Y happened here and X did not happen" is a valid response to "I believe X will happen if we have Y"
You expressed curiosity about a subject and I assumed it was earnest. My apologies for misinterpreting.
> Something can still be illegal even if there are no criminal penalties.
If someone drives without a license, we don’t call it “driving illegally”. “We call it driving without a license”. Just because something is unlawful doesn’t mean we are required to use the word “illegal”. “Undocumented” is more informative than “illegal”, because it indicates that they lack authority to be in this country. “Illegal” tells us nothing, although we assume a lot.
> The other response can also be the equally asinine “no human being is undocumented either”.
I disagree with you here. Human beings can be undocumented. It means they don’t have documents. They can’t be “illegal” though. It’s a misuse of language.
The point behind “undocumented immigrants” is that if it’s shortened, it doesn’t become something really offensive in the way that “illegal immigrants” becomes “illegals”.
Whatever we can do to humanize other people is a good thing, in my opinion. “Illegals” dehumanizes people.
I’ll keep saying “undocumented immigrants” until someone comes up with something better and which gains traction.
You're responding to my arguments with bare assertions. If you want to say that someone lacks authority to be in this country, then why not use the straightforward "unauthorized immigrant"? By contrast, "Undocumented" is an ambiguous term with no obvious meaning. You can deconstruct it to see it hints at "lacking documents", but it doesn't tell you what kind of documents or how they lacked them. What kind of immigration documents are they missing? Did they lose them? Did they never acquire them? Do they have documents but somehow went outside their bounds? Who knows, it's a muddy term.
It's valid to say "driving without a license" to describe unlicensed drivers, but it's also valid to say "driving illegally" though this typically describes a much wider array of illegal conduct than just whether or not they have their license. FWIW people in the legal system do indeed use "driving illegally" to discuss unlicensed driving, it's also often how I get my point across to my clients.
I never use "illegals" despite using "illegal immigrant", so I'm at least one case study to prove it's possible to use one term and not the other.
> You're responding to my arguments with bare assertions.
As a consequence of our cultural conditioning and poor school curriculum.
People are a disaster, but they are products of the system they were raised in. If we want something to change, the system itself has to be taken down, and this is something that all people "should" be able to get behind in a bi-partisan fashion.
> “Undocumented” is more informative than “illegal”, because it indicates that they lack authority to be in this country.
False. A citizen who happens to not have documentation is also "undocumented".
The fact of the matter is that the person is present in the country legally or illegally (*knowledge of* the truth of the matter is a different layer of reality, but simplistic, deceitful cultural norms tend to hide this level of detail from the undereducated [1] public), and any aversion to admitting this transparently is deceitful (or delusional, etc).
> They can’t be “illegal” though. It’s a misuse of language.
Their action is illegal: entering a sovereign nation contrary to the laws of that nation.
Do you have the ability to understand *and explicitly acknowledge* this?
> The point behind “undocumented immigrants” is that if it’s shortened, it doesn’t become something really offensive in the way that “illegal immigrants” becomes “illegals”.
The sensation that you can read minds is an illusory side effect of consciousness and the norms of the culture you were raised in.
[1] I always wonder if the western education system's lack of philosophy as part of core curriculum is an accidental or deliberate error.
Haha, me too! But I prefer people put their cards on the table so we can see what they are up to.
Sadly, most neurotypicals are utterly oblivious to the fact that they live in an illusion, so we get nonstop nonsense as they argue with each other over their respective delusions.
The term "illegal immigrant" is itself something of a euphemism. There was a long period not so very far in the past when non-citizens were called "aliens" instead. This just highlights the problem with a focus on supposedly offensive language: the slippage just continues indefinitely into the future as each term is declared offensive in its turn, meanwhile the underlying conditions which no one really wants to acknowledge as being bad remain the same.
I wouldn't consider "alien" a neutral descriptor, but it all depends on what you'd want to emphasize. If someone wants to highlight a person's 'foreigness' or 'otherness' then 'alien' would work, but if we're talking about the legal status of one's immigration then 'alien' doesn't tell us anything about that.
Well, I didn't say it was neutral (although at one time I'm sure at least some people considered it so, just like we consider "immigrant," its replacement, neutral now) nor that it said anything about someone's status. I remember when "illegal alien" was a fairly current term. Then it became illegal immigrant, now it's undocumented immigrant, and with the speed of such things these days I'm sure soon it will be something else, and undocumented will be considered pejorative. It's just a status game.
You're right, I mischaracterized your position. What I should have said is that I don't consider "illegal immigrant" to be a euphemism. I think good tests for whether a phrase is a euphemism is whether it downplays/softens a concept, or whether its meaning cannot be discerned through defining individual words (e.g. "affirmative action"). I don't believe "illegal immigrant" would fit under either umbrella; it doesn't soften the concept nor does it obscure the meaning.
I do agree with you about the never-ending euphemism treadmill.
I've taken to using "unauthorized immigrant", in order to avoid both the pitfalls of affirming an "obfuscating euphemism" and of triggering an autopilot reaction to "illegal immigrant". Nobody has had an immediate "No human being is unauthorized" reaction, derailing rational discussion.
I'm fine with this term as well.
Thanks for "illegal immigrant"; a breath of fresh air.
I agreed with your basic stance until this post prompted me to reconsider. I still don't have a strong feeling, but the thing that gives me doubt is that I failed to think of a single other case where we say someone is an "illegal X" for any other crime.
Some crimes have separate words as a descriptor, such as "murderer".
Sometimes the word illegal is applied to a different object ("illegal firearm").
But I can't think of any phrase like "illegal driver", which makes me think that "illegal immigrant" actually is an outlier phrase.
I'm not claiming this is a proof you shouldn't use the phrase, just that it makes it more likely that the objectors have a core of a point, even if they've failed to articulate it well.
This is really good pushback! Perhaps the distinction here is though the specific act of migration only happened once, the continued presence is the so-called 'sin'. Accordingly, the label attaches indefinitely for as long as the "illegal" presence does.
There are two ways we can go from here. One is to acknowledge that negative indefinite labels within the legal realm tend to be very negative (felon, sex offender, etc.). The other is to recognize that maybe immigration presents unique circumstances that justify the indefinite label. Your comment made me think that maybe there's more to the impugning concern than I previously realized. Either way however, it wouldn't support substituting a vaguer or more ambiguous term in its stead, like "undocumented".
Note that in the 2000s there was, for a while, a trend in mainstream newspapers (as well as right-wing talk radio) of calling folks "illegals," which I think most would agree is an even more dehumanizing term than "illegal immigrants," see for example https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/FIELD-POLL-Majority-against-illegals-getting-2694342.php
Well done: attacking the language used in the mainstream is a great path out of this simulation we've built around ourselves over the last several decades.
Wow, like hardly anyone has read this but keep up the great posts.
I'm curious how anyone can be an anarchist but it seems particularly odd given your advocacy of 100% open borders - Surely, in the USA at least, this would result in pitched gun battles on the US/Mexican border and the mass lynching of any immigrants seen as "taking our jobs".
The Schengen Area in Europe has open borders between several sovereign nations. I don't understand where this prediction of gun battles and lynchings comes from.
Anarchism for me is an aspiration towards reducing the role of the state (and other organs of authority) in many areas, eventually towards zero. There are some functions I concede cannot be practically eliminated (at least not yet) such as police.
Where did I mention Europe/Schengen? Or are you only for anarchy in Europe?
Your second paragraph is too vague to even warrant a reply.
You made a prediction and I didn't know what the prediction was based on, so I looked for parallel situations. "Y happened here and X did not happen" is a valid response to "I believe X will happen if we have Y"
You expressed curiosity about a subject and I assumed it was earnest. My apologies for misinterpreting.
> Something can still be illegal even if there are no criminal penalties.
If someone drives without a license, we don’t call it “driving illegally”. “We call it driving without a license”. Just because something is unlawful doesn’t mean we are required to use the word “illegal”. “Undocumented” is more informative than “illegal”, because it indicates that they lack authority to be in this country. “Illegal” tells us nothing, although we assume a lot.
> The other response can also be the equally asinine “no human being is undocumented either”.
I disagree with you here. Human beings can be undocumented. It means they don’t have documents. They can’t be “illegal” though. It’s a misuse of language.
The point behind “undocumented immigrants” is that if it’s shortened, it doesn’t become something really offensive in the way that “illegal immigrants” becomes “illegals”.
Whatever we can do to humanize other people is a good thing, in my opinion. “Illegals” dehumanizes people.
I’ll keep saying “undocumented immigrants” until someone comes up with something better and which gains traction.
You're responding to my arguments with bare assertions. If you want to say that someone lacks authority to be in this country, then why not use the straightforward "unauthorized immigrant"? By contrast, "Undocumented" is an ambiguous term with no obvious meaning. You can deconstruct it to see it hints at "lacking documents", but it doesn't tell you what kind of documents or how they lacked them. What kind of immigration documents are they missing? Did they lose them? Did they never acquire them? Do they have documents but somehow went outside their bounds? Who knows, it's a muddy term.
It's valid to say "driving without a license" to describe unlicensed drivers, but it's also valid to say "driving illegally" though this typically describes a much wider array of illegal conduct than just whether or not they have their license. FWIW people in the legal system do indeed use "driving illegally" to discuss unlicensed driving, it's also often how I get my point across to my clients.
I never use "illegals" despite using "illegal immigrant", so I'm at least one case study to prove it's possible to use one term and not the other.
> You're responding to my arguments with bare assertions.
As a consequence of our cultural conditioning and poor school curriculum.
People are a disaster, but they are products of the system they were raised in. If we want something to change, the system itself has to be taken down, and this is something that all people "should" be able to get behind in a bi-partisan fashion.
> “Undocumented” is more informative than “illegal”, because it indicates that they lack authority to be in this country.
False. A citizen who happens to not have documentation is also "undocumented".
The fact of the matter is that the person is present in the country legally or illegally (*knowledge of* the truth of the matter is a different layer of reality, but simplistic, deceitful cultural norms tend to hide this level of detail from the undereducated [1] public), and any aversion to admitting this transparently is deceitful (or delusional, etc).
> They can’t be “illegal” though. It’s a misuse of language.
Their action is illegal: entering a sovereign nation contrary to the laws of that nation.
Do you have the ability to understand *and explicitly acknowledge* this?
> The point behind “undocumented immigrants” is that if it’s shortened, it doesn’t become something really offensive in the way that “illegal immigrants” becomes “illegals”.
The sensation that you can read minds is an illusory side effect of consciousness and the norms of the culture you were raised in.
[1] I always wonder if the western education system's lack of philosophy as part of core curriculum is an accidental or deliberate error.
> Do you have the ability to understand *and explicitly acknowledge* this?
The aversion does seem to be against acknowledging that people break the law. I'm at peace because I think some laws are meant to be broken!
Haha, me too! But I prefer people put their cards on the table so we can see what they are up to.
Sadly, most neurotypicals are utterly oblivious to the fact that they live in an illusion, so we get nonstop nonsense as they argue with each other over their respective delusions.
The term "illegal immigrant" is itself something of a euphemism. There was a long period not so very far in the past when non-citizens were called "aliens" instead. This just highlights the problem with a focus on supposedly offensive language: the slippage just continues indefinitely into the future as each term is declared offensive in its turn, meanwhile the underlying conditions which no one really wants to acknowledge as being bad remain the same.
I wouldn't consider "alien" a neutral descriptor, but it all depends on what you'd want to emphasize. If someone wants to highlight a person's 'foreigness' or 'otherness' then 'alien' would work, but if we're talking about the legal status of one's immigration then 'alien' doesn't tell us anything about that.
Well, I didn't say it was neutral (although at one time I'm sure at least some people considered it so, just like we consider "immigrant," its replacement, neutral now) nor that it said anything about someone's status. I remember when "illegal alien" was a fairly current term. Then it became illegal immigrant, now it's undocumented immigrant, and with the speed of such things these days I'm sure soon it will be something else, and undocumented will be considered pejorative. It's just a status game.
You're right, I mischaracterized your position. What I should have said is that I don't consider "illegal immigrant" to be a euphemism. I think good tests for whether a phrase is a euphemism is whether it downplays/softens a concept, or whether its meaning cannot be discerned through defining individual words (e.g. "affirmative action"). I don't believe "illegal immigrant" would fit under either umbrella; it doesn't soften the concept nor does it obscure the meaning.
I do agree with you about the never-ending euphemism treadmill.
Well, the "alien" part got softened first, now they're working on the "illegal" part.