California, The Rhetoric Of Illegal Immigration, And The Perils Of Ignoring Thucydides’s Warning
By Victor Davis Hanson
Wednesday, November 15th, 2017
Vocabulary changes always reflect the agendas of a political debate.
The fight over illegal immigration plays out by altering words and their meanings. Take the traditional rubric “illegal alien.” The English has been clear and exact for nearly a century: illegal alien (cf. Latin alienus) was a descriptive term for any foreigner who crossed the US border without coming through customs to obtain proper legal sanction.
Illegal alien, then, was a politically neutral, exact, and descriptive term: one used by both the Supreme Court and Internal Revenue Service.
http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2017/11/california-rhetoric-illegal-immigration-perils-ignoring-thucydidess-warning/
