| A hijacking of the English language just took place.
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| It
happened earlier this month when Seattle activists accused Senate
candidate Mike McGavick of using "divisive" language by invoking the
word "illegals" in an ad.
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| In the TV spot, McGavick's camp says Sen. Maria Cantwell "voted to allow Social Security benefits to illegals."
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| Liberal activists, led by Hate Free Zone Washington, a social-justice group, blasted such language, calling it "dehumanizing."
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| "This
kind of anti-immigrant rhetoric is inflammatory," the activists
claimed, "and does nothing to solve the real problems to our broken
immigration system."
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| Immigration policy in America is broken.
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| The
system doesn't reflect the millions of people who sneak in and help our
economy by cooking in restaurants, working as nannies, picking fruit or
building homes. |
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| But
to suggest people who come from Latin America or Canada or wherever
without valid paperwork are somehow here legally is ridiculous.
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| As
David Ray of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, put it:
"Referring to an illegal alien as an 'undocumented immigrant' is like
calling a bank robbery an 'unauthorized withdrawal.' "
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| "Undocumented workers" or "unauthorized migrants" are euphemisms used for a reason -- to sugarcoat uncomfortable truths.
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| You see this verbal jibber-jabber all over the place.
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| Folks
at Hewlett-Packard are in hot water for obtaining others' phone records
by pretending to be those people -- or people with legitimate access
rights -- then coming up with a pretext for needing the records. |
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| The corporate world calls this pretexting. In the rest of the universe, it is known as lying.
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| After
Hurricane Katrina, victims were not to be called refugees, but
evacuees, a flaccid noun that doesn't capture the depth of the
suffering.
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| President Bush likes to talk about reforming welfare. He means dismantling it.
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| What
makes the linguistic spin surrounding illegals brain-numbing is that
using polite words or phrases doesn't magically give people legal
status. It does wipe out accurate language in the name of protecting
the feelings of people who are in this country without permission.
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| I'm usually on the same page as Pramila Jayapal of Hate Free Zone, but not this time.
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| "Factually,
no human being is 'illegal,' " says Jayapal, director of the
social-justice group. "People commit acts that are illegal. Many of our
august Congress people have committed illegal acts -- but we do not
call them 'illegal.' "
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| Jayapal
points out that being in America without valid immigration papers isn't
a criminal offense. The immigration system was set up as a civil
system, not a criminal one. Immigration violations, she says, are
typically considered civil violations.
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| That
said, people without papers aren't following the rules. That makes them
illegal immigrants or illegal aliens or illegals for short.
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| "It's
about stigma and dignity," Jayapal says. She said the activists
"singled out" McGavick, adding, "It was an educational opportunity."
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| But to what end?
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| Public attention got deflected from where it's needed -- on meaningful policy discussions -- and that is nothing new.
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| Whether they're "refugees" or "evacuees," the flood victims of New Orleans are still without homes.
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| Whether
they're "illegals" or "paperless immigrants," the hardworking people
who cross the border still are looking over their shoulders.
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| Meanwhile,
the PC word police keep up a blindfolded pursuit. They recently called
the Cantwell campaign to complain about her ad rebutting McGavick's;
the senator's ad says "illegal immigrants."
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| Uh oh.
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| "We're
working on changing it," a spokeswoman for the comically hypersensitive
Cantwell campaign said Monday. "They need to get the voice-over guy
back in the studio to redo it."
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| What will the new ad say?
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| "Undocumented workers," the spokeswoman said. "Or undocumented immigrants."
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| What a bunch of bovine droppings. |
