Why do people refer to illegal aliens as undocumented people(That includes all countries). They say it is immoral to separate a mother from her child. They are breaking the law, and if the woman who wrote a bad check or stole some money to feed her child (or children), is sent to jail there is not an uproar about her and her child being separated.
The mother could take her child back to her country with her, but can’t take it to jail. By breaking the law they are also harming the people who come here legally.
I can sympathize with the mother,but being sent back is the risk she took coming here without a green card.
I understand that some come here just to have their child so they feel they cannot be deported.
I think that it’s done for a few interrelated reasons:
Using the term “undocumented alien” doesn’t prejudge the legality of the person’s presence here the way that “illegal immigrant” does…it preserves the ambiguity of the person’s status, while “illegal immigrant” has already judged the person to be breaking the law.
The people more likely to use “undocumented alien” are generally those who are more sympathetic to the situation of the people in question and more likely to think they should stay in this country. So they’re going to frame the term in a way that’s most supportive of them, and people tend to feel more positive about an “undocumented alien” rather than an “illegal immigrant”. Nobody wants to say they support illegality, while lack of documentation isn’t such a big deal.
Which they did, by entering the country illegally.
This is the real reason. People who use the term are trying to distance themselves and the illegal aliens from the fact that what they did was illegal. So, they invented a more “acceptable” term to try to ignore the fact that laws are, in fact, being broken.
A lot of “illegal” immigrants entered the country legally and subsequently became illegal. Most of the time this is by their own doing (i.e., visa overstays) but it does happen that they sometimes become illegal through no fault of their own - such as when their employer lies to them about having renewed their work permit, or when bureaucratic delays result in their old status expiring before their renewal has been approved.
Yeah, this isn’t a GQ and is ripe to be moved to GD. I’m afraid that even as a GD, it doesn’t have much in the way of legs.
The simple answer (and apologies if I am anticipating the GD move) is pretty uninteresting: they do it for tendentious reasons, to imply sympathy with the alien (after all, it’s only some petty papers he’s missing, it’s not as though he’s committed a crime just by being here) and to suggest that the bureaucracy of the immigration system (actually lenient as compared to, say, gaining citizenship in Japan or Kuwait), and not the alien’s conscious choice to break the law by coming to or remaining in the country in contravention of the rules, is the primary culprit. Yes, it’s hypocritical. No, there’s not much to discuss, it’s fairly garden variety Orwellian renaming-of-things.
I disagree most strongly. They have not yet had their day in court. Calling them “illegal aliens” is like calling an arrested person a burglar or murderer without specifying that he’s merely an alleged burglar or murderer. But to call them undocumented merely quotes the observation of the arresting officer.
First is what Keeve points out. “Illegal” prejudges the result of any hearing. The most that can be claimed before a full legal hearing conducted with due process is that they have been, to use that weasel phrase, ‘alleged to have violated the law.’
"I have here in my hand documentary proof that 102 Dopers, including Magellan01 and Shodan, are connected to the subverting of our immigration laws by illegal Hispanic workers. (It’s true, too: they’ve denounced it strongly, and that’s a ‘connection’.) Phrased in that McCarthyesque way, it sounds like they’re already tried and convicted in the public mind – wouldn’t it be far better to refuse to arrest except on probable cause, then actually test out the evidence in a court of law? And if you deserve that, how about someone else who committed the major crime of having been born legally to a Hispanic family?
The third point is that ‘undocumented’ does not equal ‘illegally resident.’ Our own Fierra went through this a few years back – she was legally in this country on a visa which she was entitled to have renewed under law and duly filed for that renewal in plenty of time, but owing to monumental screwups at INS, did not receive the paperwork granting her her renewal fully processed and sent to her until well after her pre-reneweal visa expired. She was here legally – she complied with the laws to come here legally and work here, she did everything required to renew her visa within the prescribed time (actually earlier than it), and she was entitled to get the renewal and remain here by the relevant laws. But she was undocumented – she did not have the paperwork that would prove that, through nough fault of her own.
Another point to be made is that the laws need massive reform, as even Pres. Bush made clear – someone proved that at the current quota and the estimated number of Mexicans wishing to immigrate or at least be guest workers, they can exepect to get their paperwork sometime within the next five million years. And the agribusinesses which employ them prefer illegal aliens, because they are anxious to avoid anything that would cause them to be deported, and hence will work for less, live in substandard conditions and work in sub-OSHA unsafe conditions, don’t expect unemployment or workmen’s comp. or any of the other legal requirements on an employer, and in general will never make a fuss.
But the final point is one that Emma Lazarus made well over 100 years ago:
If we have decided that what made us great is no longer available, then truly we have turned our back on our heritage.
On the other hand, if he is in my fucking living room with the silverware tucked under his arm, it is not much of a stretch to call him a burglar.
Presumption of innocence is a legal fiction, used in a court of law for purposes other than those confined strictly to probabilities. How come you don’t say “allegedly undocumented” - it hasn’t been proven that they have no green card via sworn testimony either.
And Poly - maybe you could quote the line from The New Colossus where the Statue of Liberty says “go ahead and break the laws of the country you sneaked into illegally - it’s what made America great!”
Sure, sure - all those guys doing lawn care in Los Angeles for $5 a day just overstayed their student visas.
On the contrary – you certainly reserve the freedom to pick and choose what policies from 100 years ago you wish to keep, don’t you? That was a magnificent bit of poetry, but it’s certainly not unreasonable to wish to revisit the wisdom of a policy crafted when the US had much more undeveloped land, and didn’t have rules about hospitals having to treat uninsured persons. You want to see the US adopt compassionate policies about universal education and universal health care, which we didn’t have when the Statute of Liberty was placed on Bedloe Island, but preserve intact a policy that welcomes in immigrants by the boatload. Maybe it’s possible to do both, but it’s by no means a required conclusion.
About 45% of undocumented aliens had legal a visa which they overstayed.
Also, not all undocumented aliens are illegal. For instance, those who seek asylum, generally came to the country undocumented. Yet they are not actually in violation of any law.
Even then though, that doesn’t necessarily make them an illegal alien. It does make them “out of status,” but if their I-94 is still valid, then in some cases (and perhaps all, for all I know), then they are not yet unlawfully present.
My gf used to work with a social services place that provided services to undocumented workers that were suffering from domestic abuse. A huge number of them were woman who came to the US as wives to American men (think mail-order brides, or similar arrangements), and then left when they were abused. As you can’t get a green-card unless you were married to a citizen for ~2 years, and in many cases their husbands didn’t even bother to legally marry them in the first place, they’re technically here illegally, but it’s a stretch to say that they’re “illegal immigrants”. Most of them don’t have the resources to get back home even if they want to.
So I’d say that, while to some extent “undocumented” is a euphemism, it also covers a larger class of people then what is traditionally meant by “illegal alien”, and so its use is justified.
ETA: also, another point vis-a-vis social work. A lot of people who use the “undocumented” term are those trying to provide social services. Since illegal immigrants are pretty paranoid about making contact with institutions set up to help them as they fear being deported, it makes sense not to use the term “illegal” when trying to convince them to accept services.
While it is a crime to attempt to cross into the US in a manner that violates US immigration laws (e.g. “illegal immigration”), it is not illegal to already be within the US without valid immigration papers. Once an “illegal immigrant” makes it across the border they are no longer in violation of any criminal laws simply to be here. At that point they become undocumented immigrants. Deportations and other immigration proceedings are handled by administrative law, not criminal law. Formerly this was handled by the INS and the Bush administration shifted this responsibility to the DHS. It’s really all semantics, it just depends if you use the word “illegal” to mean without permission, or in violation of a criminal statute.
There are also undocumented aliens who turn out to be U.S. citizens. They had a legal green card (now called an LPR (Legal permanent Resident) card) as a child but it lapsed in adulthood. However, their parent naturalized before they were 18, while they were holding LPR status. They are “derivative citizens” (under section 300 of the Immigration and Naturalization Act) and may not even know it.