How We Got In Immigration Mess—Our Lawless Ruling Class Wants Us There
JOHN DERBYSHIRE • AUGUST 18, 2023 • 1,900 WORDS • 104 COMMENTS • REPLY
In a recent post , I discussed an article by Adam Ellwanger, Professor of English at the University of Houston. Professor Ellwanger tracks the way we have, across the years, most commonly referred to illegal aliens.
He reports that we started by referring to them as, duh, “illegal aliens,” a straightforward and precise term used in federal legislation. However, it turned out that some high proportion of Americans thought that the word “alien” was a synonym for “bug-eyed monster,” so we switched to “illegal immigrant.”
But hey, no human being is illegal! Only acts can be illegal: larceny, forgery, assault, et. So we switched to “undocumented persons.”
That prefix “un-” is kinda negative, though…so after wrestling with our national conscience a few more years we ended up, in the Obama Administration, with “migrant workers.” Professor Ellwanger writes:
https://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/how-we-got-in-immigration-mess-our-lawless-ruling-class-wants-us-there/
