Then they all were lumped together, legal and illegal, as "migrants," so if you were against the illegal ones, you were against all of them. And finally they became the ultimate virtuous class, called "Dreamers." Are American kids ever called "dreamers" by the media? I think not.
Anyway, Donald Trump has made it okay to say "illegal aliens" again, and the media is whining about it.
The Associated Press dropped ‘‘illegal immigrant’’ in 2013, soon after NBC News and ABC News. The New York Times announced it would encourage reporters and editors to ‘‘consider alternatives,’’ but ‘‘illegal immigrant’’ has shown up dozens of times in the paper in the two years since. The same goes for The Washington Post, CBS and The Wall Street Journal.
‘We need to keep illegals out,’’ Donald Trump said at the Republican presidential debate earlier this month after being reminded of his earlier claims that Mexico is sending rapists and other criminals across the border.
The Fox News anchor Chris Wallace picked up the term in a question, and Mike Huckabee volleyed it back, claiming that the solvency of Social Security and Medicare was under threat from ‘‘illegals, prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, all the people that are freeloading off the system now.’’
The more common phrase, ‘‘illegal immigrant,’’ also implies suspicion, but strip the noun from it and the entire identity of a person who crosses the border without permission, or outstays his or her visa, is reduced to that of a criminal: What rights could he or she be entitled to?
That's correct. Criminal aliens are not citizens. They have no rights.
And ‘‘illegals’’ implies a permanent caste, as if there is no possibility of becoming anything else — even if millions of immigrants in the course of American history have shown otherwise.
A minor point of distinction: those millions of previous immigrants came here legally. And I would hope there is "no possibility of becoming anything else" for illegals, except perhaps "emigrants."
So we are supposedly disempowering illegal aliens by calling them illegals. For years American citizens have been disempowered from calling them what they are for fear of being called racists. Americans had their jobs taken away by illegals, their taxes went to pay for illegals education and health care, and they were killed on the roads and the streets...by illegals.
Not "undocumented migrants," not "Dreamers." Our right to protest them was disempowered when we were forced to call them people who "lost their papers," and they were considered the supreme virtuous class.
And until Donald Trump came along, most Republicans were afraid to call them what they were. But now we have reclaimed the phrase. Donald Trump said the words, and he wasn't struck down in the polls, so we can say them, too. Words have meaning, so this is an important victory, thanks to Donald Trump.
I still am very suspicious about Trump's sudden turn to constitutionalism, given his past, but once again he is doing this primary contest a great service, pulling Scott Walker and other candidates to the right on this issue.
This article was produced by NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.
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