EDITORIALS

Call them out-of-status

Plain English no habla aqui

— IT SEEMS only a few months ago that we heard about the term, Illegal Immigrant, no longer being allowed in some quarters. Specifically, those quarters in which illegal immigration was being debated. It seems some folks don’t like other folks referring to illegal immigrants as illegal immigrants. Too direct. Too accurate. Too much like plain English. Better to use some euphemism or, in a pinch, just politically correct gibberish.

If you’re an immigrant and you’re in this country illegally, then you’re an illegal immigrant. But that won’t do, will it? Not in these times. Not now when spades aren’t spades. No, they’re entrenchment tools. At least to those who’d like to hold the language hostage to their political agenda.

Vocabulary is the Little Round Top, the decisive point, of every political battle. Dictate the vocabulary, and a strategic point has been occupied. And maybe the war won. The fog of war may obscure the game being played here, but it’s all about the battle for that linguistic point. Language can be all.

Back in August, Newsday published a full story on this debate-within-a-debate. The question: Should we still use the term Illegal Immigrant?

Newsday found a bunch of folks who objected to the phrase. And quoted them. It seems those simple and all too-accurate words deeply offend the easily offended. Ergo, those who refer to illegal immigrants as “illegal immigrants” were clearly guilty of racism. As usual, a political debate had been reduced to name-calling. And the level of public discourse was lowered again.

To put it in Orwellian language, specifically that of his masterpiece 1984, we didn’t belly feel the whole argument against this double plus ungood term that was being dropped down the memory hole. And said so.

As for those protesting the use of a dirty trick like plain English, they sounded like any other gaggle of overly sensitive college kids with too much time on their hands. And entirely too great a need to be heard, or at least quoted. But, we told ourselves, surely they couldn’t do much harm.

WE TOLD ourselves wrong. Never underestimate the damage ideologues can wreak when they go to fooling around with the language, like a 2-year-old handling a loaded pistol. Even a sturdy, practical, time-tested language like English.

Now comes a congressman. Newly aware college types who just got out of an all-night bull session in the dorms have nothing on a congressman when it comes to the need to be heard, or at least quoted. And let it be noted that John Conyers is 100 percent congressman.

Delicate soul that he is, Congressman Conyers told his colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee that they shouldn’t be using the term Illegal Immigrant. His plea for censorship went like this:

“I hope no one uses the term ‘illegal immigrants’ here today. Our citizens are not . . . the people in this country are not illegal. They are out-of-status. They are new Americans that are immigrants.”

(Here we pause.)

(Here we pause longer. Because words fail. Whether they’re words the Hon. John Conyers would let us use or not.)

Where to begin? How about we begin at the beginning?

You’ll notice, if you’ll examine the statement from the good congressman, he almost said “our citizens are not illegal.” But caught himself just in time. He must have realized he’d used the word citizen and had to regroup. Because a citizen can’t be an illegal immigrant. Any more than night can be day. The congressman does seem to recognize some linguistic limits on his political agenda, at least for now. But when you set out to neuter the language the way he did, mistakes can be made. Freudian slips can multiply.

Nobody in this country is illegal? Then what do you call all the illegal ones? Last we heard, there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 million to 12 million folks here illegally. That is, illegal immigrants. And they haven’t disappeared, no matter what a congressman says. They’re still here, and they’re still illegal.

The euphemism of the day for their status, or lack of it, seems to be “undocumented.” Or the congressman’s choice, out-of-status. But it may be only a matter of time before those terms are considered unacceptable, too. And, of course, racist. Anybody who disagrees with the John Conyerses of the world is sure to be called a racist-the way anybody who used to disagree with Joe McCarthy had to be a communist.

THOSE who read this column regularly know that we’re not exactly anti-immigrant. Heck, that’d be second-cousin to being anti-American in this nation of immigrants. There are some folks who’d throw us out of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy for daring to favor a sensible overhaul of our immigration system. Complete with a secure border and a path to citizenship-in that order.

Immigrants come here to work-and the work ethic is as American as the Pilgrims and Puritans. And goes back as far. Not that xenophobia isn’t a traditional American trait, too. Didn’t good ol’ Ben Franklin warn everybody about all those Germans taking over the country?

Then and now, ambitious, hardworking, adventuresome people will flow toward wherever the jobs are-as naturally as water flows downhill. This country needs to figure out a way to let those workers work, weed out any bad guys among them, and so get these people out of the shadows where they are being preyed upon. And, lest we forget, secure the border. Because the law still needs to be obeyed. La ley es la ley. The law is the law. And deserves tobe respected.

No, let’s not underestimate the difficulty of the job facing us. But neither let us underestimate the need to solve it. Finally. Or the urgency of the task-for it is a terrible thing to be someone without a home in the world, caught between a country that offers little hope and one where he must live in fear of the police, the border patrol, the overzealous Inspector Javerts on his trail or some informer with a grudge. Or just a street gang that knows the victim won’t dare appeal to the cops. It’s a terrible thing to be a man without a country.

NO DECENT country would tolerate a broken “system” that condemns millions to live in the shadows. It’s time to fix it. What this country needs just now, and has for some time, is a fair, thoughtful, and workable response to the problem of, pardon our language, illegal immigration. Because illegal immigration exists, and calling it something else won’t make it go away. Only doing something about it will accomplish that.

The good news is that Washington seems to be in the mood-finally!-to have this debate, and maybe even hammer out a sensible solution. So you’ll hear more and more in the coming weeks and months about what needs to be done about illegal immigrants.

But that’s no reason to make the English language a casualty of this debate. It’s about the best tool we’ve got to reason together. Even if reasoning together, with respect for each other and for the language, may be too much to expect from a politically correct congressman.

Editorial, Pages 16 on 02/08/2013

Upcoming Events