I searched but couldn’t find any past ruling – is “illegals” (the plural noun) considered hate speech? I think it should be – it’s an inherently dehumanizing descriptor, IMO, akin to calling immigrants vermin.
If this has been discussed before, and I missed it, apologies.
At the very least it’s rude as hell.
Certainly in the past it was not considered as the OP implies, although more and more I think it’s becoming unacceptable.
So what is the politically correct term for people who enter the country illegally? Or is it considered impolite to refer to them at all?
I’ve heard them called “tired”, “poor”, and “huddled masses”.
YMMV but my one grandfather and grandmother were both illegals; possibly the other grandfather as well but there is some question about that. Only one grandmother basically got here with the paperwork needed. To me it is something I think of with pride; all that they went through to hopefully build a future at a time when immigrants were pretty much hated and unwanted by everyone except the mine and mill owners. It was a different time then of course and these days “undocumented” seems the more press-worthy descriptive but illegal wouldn’t offend me at all. In terms of this board I think context would come into play. Offer it as a simple statement of fact as I did here and its pretty safe. Use at as “all those damn illegals are screwing up the universe” and a trip to the Pit could be in the future.
Just going by news stories and staying away from what is and is not PC ---------- I’m pretty sure its undocumented individuals or workers.
“Illegal immigrants,” I guess.
That being said, I would like to point out that this is, grammatically, like the difference between “black people” and “blacks.” We have no problem saying “blacks,” “whites,” etc. on this message board instead of “black people/white people” even though it is similar dehumanizing, gramatically speaking, as shortening “illegal immigrant” to “illegals.” In both cases, you are turning an adjective into a noun.
Illegal immigrants.
In general, it’s impolite to refer to people by an adjective unless you’re part of that group, or if the term has very widespread use that is condoned by the people who it’s used about. It can be tricky to get it right and most people will get it wrong sometimes.
People who use the word “illegal” as a noun don’t tend to be the people who actually care if the people they’re talking about are illegal immigrants or not.
Sounds more like tone policing then hate speech policing.
The State of Washington makes a distinction between legal immigrants and undocumented immigrants/illegal aliens:
Cite.
I don’t like the term “illegals” because it’s imprecise (and bad grammar). Offensive, maybe only to people who are offended by laws regulating who can reside in the US. But I still don’t care for the term because it’s so awkward.
I’ve tended to use the term but that’s because I’m a little behind the curve on how it’s migrated from acceptable shorthand to use as a pejorative. Also, I’ve never liked the term “undocumented”. Makes it sound like they lost their wallet or something. “Uninvited guests”? Of course, any term will, over time, suffer the same fate. There was a time when “retarded” was the clinical term for someone whom we’d now call “developmentally disabled” (unless that term has now slipped into slur territory without me knowing it).
Anybody remember the old Lenny Bruce routine: Kind of illustrates the point.
It’s a real hang-up, being divorced when you’re on the road. Suppose it’s three o’clock in the morning: I’ve just done the last show, I meet a girl, and I like her, and suppose I have a record I’d like her to hear, or I just want to talk to her—there’s no lust, no carnal image there—but because where I live is a dirty word, I can’t say to her, “Would you come to my hotel?”And every healthy comedian has given motel such a dirty connotation that I couldn’t ask my grandmother to go to a motel, say I wanted to give her a Gutenberg Bible at three in the morning.The next day at two in the afternoon, when the Kiwanis Club meets there, then hotel is clean. But at three o’clock in the morning, Jim…Christ, where the hell can you live that’s clean? You can’t say hotel to a chick, so you try to think, what won’t offend? What is a clean word to society? What is a clean word that won’t offend any chick?Trailer. That’s it, trailer.“Will you come to my trailer?”“All right, there’s nothing dirty about trailers. Trailers are hunting and fishing and Salem cigarettes. Yes, of course, I’ll come to your trailer. Where is it?”
"Inside my hotel room.”Why can’t you just say, “I want to be with you and hug and kiss you.” No, it’s “Come up while I change my shirt.” Or coffee. “Let’s have a cup of coffee.”In fifty years, coffee will be another dirty word.
Alternate plan: Call everyone who has broken the law an “illegal”.
Yeah, that’s my point about imprecision. It’s too broad a term. Meh.
It’s never been determined to be hate speech based on the board rules.
You’re missing the point. It’s not an issue of bad grammar.
It’s about making the distinction between somebody who has committed an illegal action and somebody whose existence is illegal. People commit crimes but nobody is a crime.
So criminals is OK?
And how long will that last?
Sure…if we can label everyone that has broken the law the same way.
Have you ever broken the law?
Thanks for the moderator response. Has there been behind-the-scenes discussion about it, and is it up for further discussion? Wikipedia does call it a “perjorative”: Illegal immigration - Wikipedia
And here’s some more journalistic opinion backup that it’s a dehumanizing slur: Why You Shouldn’t Use the Term “Illegals” | Teen Vogue
https://usac.ucla.edu/droptheiword/index.php
I’ll note that I’m not advocating that “illegal immigrant” be considered hate speech, just the nounification of “illegal” and “illegals”, which only appears to apply to undocumented migrants (overwhelmingly Latin American migrants when used in the US), rather than others who commit unlawful actions.
I don’t think anyone is claiming their existence is illegal, just their presence here.