Could you show where he called them “illegals” like your quote implies? This is already a medium-length thread, so I searched for the word “illegals” only, so I may have missed a place where he used a phrase like “an illegal”.
EDIT: Actually I have found places where the poster did unironically use the word, but not in this thread so far.
Why i do you believe they’re doing something illegal, when the vast majority haven’t been accused, much less convicted, of any crime, in a court of law? Are they not entitled to the presumption of innocence?
Yeah, he’s infamously used it before. I suspect that he’s only stopped because he’s gotten such strong pushback on it. Which, y’know, good on him for making a change to be less shitty, and here’s to more change.
I don’t know about now with Ireland being so much more prosperous, but in the 1990s there were loads of Irish folks in the Boston area working without papers in bars, construction, childcare and home healthcare. Overstaying their tourist visas for years at a time. And I know one guy who did this, was running a painting company employing other undocumented immigrants (from Brazil) and when he went back to Ireland after several years, he had no difficulty getting back into the US. Apparently unless you are specifically excluded you can board a plane to the US with an Irish passport and it’s up to CBP at the US airport to decide whether to admit you or not.
He returned to Ireland “permanently” around 2005, to work in his family construction business, the industry was apparently booming in Ireland at the time.
He used to brag that no one fucks with Irish people in Boston, not even La Migra.
Not sure what it is like nowadays.
It’s worth considering that we actually all benefit economically from illegal immigrants. They contribute a lot, but because of their status, forgo a lot of benefits that legal residents might be entitled to, either through genuine lack of access or fear.
I find this unconscionable, and I suspect it’s part of the reason that legal immigration for manual laborers is so difficult.
As for “undocumented,” that’s just a stupid term. Calling someone an “illegal immigrant” is just using an older standard term, not somehow declaring a person’s existence to be illegal.
Agreed. But are you aware that we currently don’t allow any “legal immigration” for people coming from Mexico or Central America? The only means they have for ever being here legally is to actually come here and request asylum.
Neither party has done much to create a path toward legal immigration for these folks. But the GOP’s approach (and, apparently, yours) is to demonize people who have committed no crime and are pursuing the only possible way to reside in the US legally.
Me too. Too bad today’s political climate is 180 degrees from ever considering it.
But it rhetorically assigns them as guilty of criminal behavior without giving them a chance to defend themselves in court. IMO it is explicitly categorizing them as lesser beings, not worthy of rights like “innocent until proven guilty”, even if that’s not necessarily always the intent of the speaker.
In matters of dehumanizing language, I defer to Elie Wiesel.
Crazy hypothetical:
@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper, suppose after a anomalous result from “23 and me” and interviewing various witnesses and relatives you discovered that you were actually born in Romania, and illegally taken into the US by your parents as a baby. No adoption paperwork was filled out and so legally you are Romanian. Would you voluntarily leave the US for Romania? If the authorities came to deport you would you consider your deportation to be just and good for the country, or bullshit based on a stupid technicality?
Pretty good, but let’s make it Ukraine instead, as many immigrants are fleeing violence.
Wiesel is saying that the phrase “illegal alien” means “illegal person.” That would require “alien” to mean “person.” While aliens are people, it is not an ethnic group nor an inherent quality of some people as opposed to others—we’re all aliens while travelling internationally, for instance.
If somebody calls me a terrible carpenter, they’re not calling me a terrible person, even though a carpenter is by definition a person.
The point about “illegal” being a conclusion not arrived at through due process of law strikes me as more sound.
Connotations of words are about more than their analyzed and discrete definitions. While I see what you’re saying about the adjective-noun construction, I don’t think that fully captures the connotations involved in phrases like “illegal aliens” or “illegal immigrants.” Those connotations, beyond the discrete definitions, are what I believe Wiesel is condemning.
You’re probably right. I don’t really move in circles where people discuss the issue with anything other than sympathy for the people caught up in this process, so I’m pretty insulated from the worst of the rhetoric.
And that shows that you are useless at learning about how “Saint” Reagan, a Republican, dealt with the issue. Stop being a willful ignoramus.
He didn’t make the change to be less shitty. He made the change to try to mask how shitty he is. Like spraying a dog turd with gold paint. It’s still shitty, but now it shines a bit.
He’s succeeding in that endeavor, with at least one dead on Mexican soil.
There’s a carpenter’s son who would disagree with you.
But there’s a German painter who’s happy for the ally.
That’s an interesting point. I wish The_Other_Waldo_Pepper had addressed it.
I’m sure there are millions of people who have been adjudicated unlawfully present, but not many of them are still in the U.S. (Obviously, deportation follows adjudication.) And the adjudication is a civil one, not a criminal one. Immigration court isn’t exactly a court of law, it’s immigration court presided by administrative law judges. I think one of the members of this message board is or was such a judge (Dinsdale?), but maybe not in the field of immigration specifically. ALJs are technically part of the executive branch, under the Department of Justice. In deportation proceedings there’s no jury, for example. Detainees have no right to a lawyer at government expense (I wrote a paper on that subject for school). The alien is not entitled to suppress evidence the government obtained unlawfully, i.e. in brazen violation of the 4th Amendment.
My wild-ass guess is that relatively few people are actually convicted of improper entry in a criminal court (8 U.S.C. § 1325 (a)). Lots of rights for the accused in a criminal proceeding, and there’s little room for plea bargaining, so deportation is the path of less resistance.
Bottom line, where The_Other_Waldo_Pepper says illegal immigrant, I’m going to read it as suspected illegal immigrant.
~Max
But that’s not what he says, and I’d bet good money that he doesn’t plan to change his usage of this phrase. Because his views on the issue are driven by personal animus for migrants, even if he doesn’t realize it (or refuses to admit it).