# Conservatives on immigration are the most vicious people on earth

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-on-immigration-are-the-most-vicious-people-on-earth/784828
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [April 20, 2017, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-on-immigration-are-the-most-vicious-people-on-earth/784828 "2017-04-20T08:38:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 110

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### Author: ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2017, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-on-immigration-are-the-most-vicious-people-on-earth/784828/110 "2017-04-22T01:37:22Z")

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There is an indefinable turning point when a word or phrase used to describe a group of people changes from everyday language to offensive slur. Illegal immigrant is somewhere right on the cusp of that point if not past it. Using “illegal” as a noun has long passed that point.

In the past the terms oriental, colored, and tranny were everyday words used with no malice to describe asian, black and transexual people. Each reached a point where the word was taken over by people using it in a pejorative way and eventually it crossed that indefinable tipping point where it was no longer acceptable to use by decent people.

Rather than rehash all the arguments about illegal immigrant as being such a term I’ll just repost some links from another thread.

> [@Deported Immigrants, and income earned while in the US](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deported-immigrants-and-income-earned-while-in-the-us/782529/31):
>
> [Should I Use the Term “Illegal Immigrant”?](http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/should-i-use-the-term-illegal-immigrant)
> 
> [Why ‘illegal immigrant’ is a slur](http://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/05/opinion/garcia-illegal-immigrants/)
> 
> [‘No human being is illegal’: linguists argue against mislabeling of immigrants](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/06/illegal-immigrant-label-offensive-wrong-activists-say)
> 
> [The Dehumanizing History Of The Words We’ve Used To Describe Immigrants](https://thinkprogress.org/the-dehumanizing-history-of-the-words-weve-used-to-describe-immigrants-18dd39c90459#.rrkbhrxf3)
> 
> [Immigration Debate: The Problem with the Word Illegal](http://ideas.time.com/2012/09/21/immigration-debate-the-problem-with-the-word-illegal/)
> 
> [The battle over the words used to describe migrants](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34061097)
> 
> [‘Illegals’](https://keller.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/llegals/)
> 
> The bottom line is the term is considered pejorative to those it applies to and many others and that is reason enough to consider it so. Especially once people started doing the tell-tale shortening of the term from ‘illegal immigrants’ to ‘illegals’.

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