In case you didn’t know, there is a campaign out there that criticizes users of the ‘i’ word.
The i-word is ‘illegal’ out of ‘illegal immigrant.’
bill o’reilly invited the spokesperson on his show, and he made some comments that I agree with, and still have questions and comments about.
The spokesperson criticized it as racist, inaccurate, and a racial slur, that dehumanizes people. She referred to them as ‘Undocumented workers.’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa2ckDy5yj4
Are you trying to make the usage of wording illegal immigrant… illegal?
Do you think virtually anyone has the right to be here because the Americans conquered Indians and parts of Mexico to get it?
The ‘I-word’ is not racist. People who are Whites, Latinos, Asians, Indians, persons of every color and nationality are coming here illegally. There is nothing racist about the words illegal immigrant.
It’s not inaccurate. The wording illegal immigrant (or illegal alien) simply means a person who is here from a different country without the legal right to be here. There are immigrants who do come here as permanent residents with a legal right to be here. Illegal immigrants sometimes do this, but lose their legal status as legal residents because they refuse to renew their VISAs or green-cards.
bill o’reilly brought most of these up.
Undocumented worker is actually much less accurate. Some of them are not working at all. If I drove into Mexico and didn’t have a legal right to be there, would I become an ‘undocumented worker’? No? They shouldn’t be called undocumented worker either. And some of them actually do have documents about them when they came here as permanent residents, or under the VISA program, before breaking it and losing legal status. If someone breaks into my house, is he an undocumented worker or illegal trespasser?
What are your thoughts?