{"id":25314,"date":"2019-10-14T17:23:10","date_gmt":"2019-10-15T00:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=25314"},"modified":"2019-10-14T17:25:25","modified_gmt":"2019-10-15T00:25:25","slug":"should-we-ban-the-phrases-illegal-alien-and-illegal-immigrant-from-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=25314","title":{"rendered":"Should we ban the phrases “illegal alien” and “illegal immigrant” from comments?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Kurman Communications<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

A rule of this blog is that undocumented immigrants are not to be referred to as “illegals” or “illegal.” <\/p>\n

But I do allow “illegal alien,” even though it’s not a phrase I’d use myself. Back when I made the rule, my thought was that it was a phrase used both by legal agencies and by mainstream news sources, so it seemed a bit weird to ban it here.<\/p>\n

But that was over a decade ago<\/a>. Things have changed since then.<\/p>\n

NYC is banning the term “illegal alien” when used to demean someone<\/a>. And neither the phrase “illegal immigrant” or “illegal alien” are used by mainstream news sources much (although they’re both common in right-wing news) – in fact, those terms are banned in many news outlets<\/a>. <\/p>\n

On the other hand, it’s still a common phrase in laws and in the courts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor said in an interview<\/a>:<\/p>\n

To dub every immigrant a criminal because they\u2019re undocumented, to call them \u201cillegal aliens,\u201d seemed, and has seemed, insulting to me. Many of these people are people I know, and they\u2019re no different than the people I grew up with or who share my life. And they\u2019re human beings with a serious legal problem, but the word \u201cillegal\u201d alien made them sound like those other kinds of criminals. And I think people then paint those individuals as something less than worthy human beings. And it changes the conversation when you recognize that this is a different\u2014it\u2019s a regulatory problem. We\u2019ve criminalized a lot of it, but it started as, and fundamentally remains, a regulatory problem, not a criminal one. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the whole, I’m leaning towards banning “illegal alien” and perhaps “illegal immigrant” from Alas going forward. Jeffrey Toobin<\/a> speaks for me when he says:<\/p>\n

There does seem to be a consensus against the use of the term by the people most affected by it, who happen to be a vulnerable minority seeking a better life, and that\u2019s good enough for me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m going to leave a few days for comments before enacting a new rule. But I think I’m unlikely to change my mind on this one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A rule of this blog is that undocumented immigrants are not to be referred to as “illegals” or “illegal.” But I do allow “illegal alien,” even though it’s not a phrase I’d use myself. Back when I made the rule, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108,98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-immigration-migrant-rights-etc","category-site-and-admin-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25314"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25317,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25314\/revisions\/25317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}