"Illegals" and "invaders" should be moderated as hate speech in the context of immigration debates

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

I’d like to talk about three terms that show up in discussions of immigration:

• Illegal immigrants
• Illegals
• Invaders (and “invasion”)

First, “Illegal immigrants” is a term that is falling out of use among experts in the field. The DOJ no longer uses it. The AP Style Guide hasn’t used it for ten years. Linguists decry it as “neither accurate nor neutral”.But I don’t think it should be considered hate speech. It’s the equivalent of an outdated term like “Negro” to describe a Black person: use it, and I’ll know whether you’re paying attention to precision and connotation in your language.

“Illegals” is different. It’s clearly an insult. It’s not accurate; it’s used to inflame emotions against the insulted group.

If you won’t take a cite from a leftist Latinx author, consider conservative activist Frank Luntz, who was telling anti-immigration activists back in 2005:

Always refer to people crossing the border illegally as “illegal immigrants” – NOT as “illegals.”

Even style guides that allow “illegal immigrants” do not allow “illegals.”

The term in the United States is directed almost 100% against Latinx immigrants, and consequently has a pretty obvious racist subtext, even when people are like, “I MEAN ALL ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.” The proof is in the pudding.

And, of course, Elie Wiesel cautions us against the term:

You who are so-called illegal aliens must know that no human being is ‘illegal’. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?

Wiesel might go farther than me, inasmuch as he thinks “illegal aliens” is not just outdated, but terrible to say. But his quote gets to the heart of why the word “illegal” is so problematic–and applying it as a plural noun is rife with ugliness without adding any clarity.

Finally, the worst of the trio: “invaders.” This isn’t subtle, this is straight from the white supremacist Great Replacement Theory.

Renaud Camus, a French writer, published a 2011 book claiming that Europe was being invaded by Black and brown immigrants from Africa. He called the book “Le Grand Remplacement,” and a conspiracy’s name was born.

As NPR elaborates,

The “great replacement” theory is sometimes seen in other ways such as claims of voter replacement and immigrants invading America, the National Immigration Forum said. The first claim assumes that immigrants and nonwhite people will vote a certain way, ultimately drowning out the votes of white Americans.

Not convinced? Check out the CATO Institute:

Real invasions are met with violence, and so it’s unsurprising to see this language repeated by a variety of different nativists who have gone on to commit terrorist attacks. To reject these attacks—as assuredly nearly all nativists do—is to reject the premise on which they were based. There is no invasion.

As @Miller stated elsewhere, calling immigrants “invaders” puts them in a class of people against whom it’s acceptable to use deadly violence. It is dangerous propaganda, and its normalization is a step on the road to racist murder.

In short: we should all avoid using “illegal immigrants,” but I don’t know that it should be banned. “Illegals” is an insult with barely-concealed racist subtext, and should be moderated. “Invaders” is dangerous hate speech that’s been tied to terrorist attacks and should draw immediate warnings or bannings for those that use the language.

(While this arose out of a thread that I got banned from due to my rage at these hateful terms, I’m not interested in discussing that moderation action.)

[iiandyiiii]

I agree with everything. The terms illegals and invaders, when referring to migrants, are inherently hateful and should so be moderated.

[Eric1]

So you’re saying the fair terms are asylum-seekers, mmm undocumented persons and other terms?

[Folly]

I think illegals is one of the worst slurs that can be used on a human being. Saying something is illegal is akin to saying it shouldn’t exist.

Illegal immigrants at least is modifying a noun instead of being a noun but seems pretty bad too.

[kayaker]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

In short: we should all avoid using “illegal immigrants,” but I don’t know that it should be banned. “Illegals” is an insult with barely-concealed racist subtext, and should be moderated. “Invaders” is dangerous hate speech that’s been tied to terrorist attacks and should draw immediate warnings or bannings for those that use the language.

Agree. I’m curious what argument can be made against what you’ve stated.

[Gyrate]

@Folly

Illegal immigrants at least is modifying a noun instead of being a noun but seems pretty bad too.

It is at least an understandable shorthand for people who entered the country without permission and remained so (NB asylum seekers would not fall into that category even if they initially entered illegally once they are in the legal system). “Undocumented immigrants” would better serve the same purpose, I suppose.

But “illegals” is in poor taste and “invaders” absolutely vile IMO.

[thorny_locust]

@kayaker

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

In short: we should all avoid using “illegal immigrants,” but I don’t know that it should be banned. “Illegals” is an insult with barely-concealed racist subtext, and should be moderated. “Invaders” is dangerous hate speech that’s been tied to terrorist attacks and should draw immediate warnings or bannings for those that use the language.

Agree. I’m curious what argument can be made against what you’ve stated.

Agreed; except that I wouldn’t give immediate bannings even for “invaders”, except perhaps for thread bans, without additional information indicating that the poster’s problematic in this area. First use by someone without a history of such issues I think should call for a warning with an explanation of the problem. Some people are just repeating what they’ve heard/read without thinking.

@Eric1

So you’re saying the fair terms are asylum-seekers, mmm undocumented persons and other terms?

I’m not an expert in the area, but I think the term might depend on who one’s talking about – undocumented people may or may not be asylum seekers.

[Darren_Garrison]

You can or can’t decide that it is hate speech (doesn’t effect me, I don’t post about the topic anyway) but I think it is incredibly silly to claim that “illegals” implies that someone is “an illegal human being”. It is clear that it means “in the country illegally” and not “being a human illegally” from context. But I’ll make a mental compromise that the term should not be used because it has negative connotations anyway (and I say “mental” because it isn’t a phrase I use or a topic I follow threads on in the first place anyway).

But as for the term “illegal immigrant”, that is an utterly cromulent term. You can insist on any circumlocuitous euphemism you like, and it still describes someone who has migrated to the country illegally. You may not like the laws that have been broken, you may wish the laws did not exist, but laws they are and broken they bave been.

[Sage_Rat]

Illegals and invaders, yes, those seem like slurs. Illegal immigrant, however, seems like a reasonable term. The person has committed a crime in the realm of immigration law. It has no greater nor lesser meaning than that.

To be fair, if someone said “criminal immigrant”, I’d think that they were talking about an immigrant who robbed a store, rather than assuming that they were talking about a person who broken, specifically, an immigration law. And so, yes, linguistically there should be no difference between how we interpret “criminal immigrant” and “illegal immigrant” but I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with that particular association became made and standardized. So long as we have both terms available and the general meaning is understood by everyone, I see no particular issue with it.

And, yes, “illegal immigrant” is not a neutral term. But neither is “criminal” nor “conspirator” nor “hero”. It’s a term for someone who made a decision to break the law. And a person who has done that is a “criminal”, which is a negative term of a certain caliber. We would expect any term dealing with criminal activities to fall in similar territory as “criminal”.

And yes, linguistically, you could squint and read the term as implying that their humanity is criminal but you really sort of have to do a hop, skip, and a jump of overthinking the topic to get to that place. Likewise, I could say that “pitchfork” contains the word “pitch” which is a black gooey substance, and it might make people think that they’re going to get their hands sticky if they ever touch a pitchfork - even though the “pitch” in this case is for throwing, like in baseball - but so we clearly need to change the term so that people don’t get confused.

I suspect that there are bigger issues in immigration law than trying to find the least theoretically un-confusable terminology for it.

[Saint_Cad]

I think I missed something. Is there a reason this is in ATMB and not GD?

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

I am proposing a change to moderation.

[ParallelLines]

Join me the agreement camp with @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness. I find illegal immigrants to be a loaded, term as it’s usually applied but at least it’s at least a vaguely legitimate descriptor. The second, “illegals” is not only loaded, but used in a way that is almost always negative, dismissive, and always fails to take into account the actual status (asylum seekers, etc) of the people involved.

Invaders is right out, othering, and violently aggressive.

In a side thread related to the discussion of this topic, I pulled up one of the most recent discussions of hate speech:

Clarification of rule against hate speech

The staff would like to clarify the SDMB’s long-standing rule against hate speech and our views on racist speech on the SDMB generally. Hate speech – that is, racial epithets and other pejorative remarks about minorities that in our opinion are clearly racist – is prohibited in all forums. If you see instances of hate speech on the SDMB, please flag the post and we will take such action as we think appropriate. Not all pejorative comments about minorities rise to the level of hate speech o…

And feel, as does the OP, we should revisit this one.

A quote from @Ed_Zotti in that thread -

No slurs or racist cheap shots. Do not post slurs or other cheap shots against minorities, including but not limited to groups characterized by race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, or gender orientation.

At a minimum, invaders is a cheap shot - and I know the board hates bright lines, but we might want to tone down the fuzziness a bit.

[thorny_locust]

@Sage_Rat

Illegals and invaders, yes, those seem like slurs. Illegal immigrant, however, seems like a reasonable term. The person has committed a crime in the realm of immigration law.

First of all, if they’re trying to apply for asylum, they haven’t committed any crime at all, even if their papers haven’t come through yet.

Second, depending on what exactly they’ve done, they may have committed a misdemeanor. I doubt that there’s any significant number of adults in the country who have never committed a misdemeanor, even if they never got charged with it.

I would tend to let “illegal immigrant” pass, however, because the phrasing pretty clearly indicates what the illegal action is intended to mean – but not for asylum seekers. And I wouldn’t use it myself; because some of the people using it do intend it to convey ‘these are all terrible criminals who shouldn’t be around the “law-abiding”’, and I don’t want to sound like I might be one of those people.

@Saint_Cad

I think I missed something. Is there a reason this is in ATMB and not GD?

Yes; because we’re discussing specifically whether the Straight Dope should moderate any or all of the terms, and if so in what fashion.

[Ludovic]

@Gyrate

It is at least an understandable shorthand for people who entered the country without permission and remained so (NB asylum seekers would not fall into that category even if they initially entered illegally once they are in the legal system). “Undocumented immigrants” would better serve the same purpose, I suppose.

I think that “undocumented immigrants” would cover both asylum seekers and unauthorized immigrants, because they don’t yet have documents allowing them to be here and work. If “documented” simply means that the system knows about you, then unauthorized immigrants who were arrested but not yet deported would also be “documented”.

If “illegal immigrant” sounds outdated due to past usage, I would be willing to change to “unauthorized immigrant” when referring to non-asylum seekers, but both terms are IMO more accurate than “undocumented”.

---

I’m not sure about the term “invaders”, even though it is false. It is only a wrong term because it is asserting something false. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be moderated, I’m only saying I don’t have an opinion on it.

“Illegals”, on the other hand, is inherently dehumanizing and I would not mind if it were moderated.

[JRDelirious]

@thorny_locust

I would tend to let “illegal immigrant” pass, however, because the phrasing pretty clearly indicates what the illegal action is intended to mean – but not for asylum seekers.

Well, yes — the point being of course that the latter group is not described by the phrase.

[Sage_Rat]

@thorny_locust

First of all, if they’re trying to apply for asylum, they haven’t committed any crime at all, even if their papers haven’t come through yet.

And that’s not illegal immigration. Asylum is the law, passed by Ronald Reagan, because he thought that it was his duty as a Christian, and to thumb his nose at Commies. Anyone calling asylum seekers illegal immigrants is simply wrong. But that has nothing to do with the term illegal immigration.

Likewise, if you were to call a woman who models lingerie a “prostitute”, even though she might be a virgin, waiting till marriage to have sex, that doesn’t affect the word “prostitute”. The word means what it means and it’s simply being misused in this case. We don’t need to change it.

You’re not going to find some magical new term that will never be misused by even one crazy, ignorant in all the land.

[Riemann]

@Darren_Garrison

I think it is incredibly silly to claim that “illegals” implies that someone is “an illegal human being”. It is clear that it means “in the country illegally” and not “being a human illegally” from context.

Elie Wiesel might have over-egged that. But there is certainly validity to the idea that the “nouning” of the adjective illegal tends to dehumanize, as though placing them in this category is all that we need to know about them. It’s analogous to “a schizophrenic” or “an ex-con”.

[Ludovic]

Note that this cuts both ways: in the recent past there was a thread where someone responded to someone who was talking about “illegal immigrants”, and paraphrased them by saying that they were talking about “illegals”. So if “illegals” is moderated as hate speech, accusing someone of using it should also be moderated even if it isn’t a direct quote modification.

[SCAdian]

@Darren_Garrison

But as for the term “illegal immigrant”, that is an utterly cromulent term. You can insist on any circumlocuitous euphemism you like, and it still describes someone who has migrated to the country illegally. You may not like the laws that have been broken, you may wish the laws did not exist, but laws they are and broken they bave been.

This, definitely.

@Sage_Rat

@thorny_locust

First of all, if they’re trying to apply for asylum, they haven’t committed any crime at all, even if their papers haven’t come through yet.

And that’s not illegal immigration. Asylum is the law, passed by Ronald Reagan, because he thought that it was his duty as a Christian, and to thumb his nose at Commies. Anyone calling asylum seekers illegal immigrants is simply wrong. But that has nothing to do with the term illegal immigration.

And this.

[thorny_locust]

@Ludovic

“unauthorized immigrant”

Hey, I kind of like that one. People with more experience in the terminology, any comments?

“Undocumented” is what I’ve been using; but it always sounds a bit to me as if it’s saying that the person/people in question has no documents at all. They may (or may not) have lots of documents – just not any that legally authorize them to be in the specific country.

ETA:

@Sage_Rat

@thorny_locust

First of all, if they’re trying to apply for asylum, they haven’t committed any crime at all, even if their papers haven’t come through yet.

And that’s not illegal immigration.

Yes, that’s what I was saying.