Si, se puede

In twin op-eds in the Las Vegas Review-Journal of June 22, Patricia Vazquez, a professor of English at the College of Southern Nevada, and Fatma Marouf, co-director of the Immigration Clinic at UNLV’s Boyd School of Law, argued that illegal immigrants should no longer be referred to as “illegal immigrants.”

“Our country has a principle of respecting the presumption of innocence as a fundamental right. Yet we allow journalists to carelessly wield the word ‘illegal,’ effectively passing sentence on the person before a judge has done so,” argued Ms. Vazquez.

“Calling these individuals ‘illegal’ before an immigration judge has had the opportunity to examine their cases is like calling someone charged with a crime a ‘criminal’ before the outcome of the trial,” echoed Fatma Marouf.

The fallacy here — and we should consider the possibility this flawed parallel is being deployed on purpose, given that both authors seem to be operating from similar sets of “talking points” — is confusing the presumption of innocence which we traditionally afford an INDIVIDUAL accused, with the ability to coherently discuss the public policy ramifications of large law-breaking populations, en masse.

Imagine that an FBI agent appears before Congress to report on an increase in bank robberies and some suggested changes to more easily apprehend the culprits.

“Last year we had to deal with 6,000 bank robberies in America,” the agent begins. “The bank robbers typically …”

“Wait,” a congresscritter interrupts him. “Our country has a principle of respecting the presumption of innocence as a fundamental right. I cannot allow you to carelessly wield the word ‘bank robber,’ effectively passing sentence on the person before a judge has done so. After all, some of these people may have just gotten confused, tried to withdraw money in excess of their current account balance. So please let’s not demonize this entire class of people. Instead, in your testimony, I’d like you to refer only to ‘persons who withdrew cash from our banks in a context in which their account balance sufficiency was unknown or unclear.’ Could you do that for me, please, Agent Jones?”

Would this facilitate a clear and coherent discussion of possible means of reversing a growth in bank robberies? Of course not. Such a nonsense formulation could be designed only to CRIPPLE such a discussion.

Any individual suspect is of course only an “alleged bank robber” unless and until convicted. But that doesn’t mean we have to pretend there were some 6,000 “alleged bank robberies” in America last year.

Similarly, if the person in front of me in line at the post office speaks very little English, and proceeds to purchase a money order for shipment to Mexico, I might SUSPECT that individual is an illegal immigrant, but it would be inappropriate for me to call that INDIVIDUAL an “illegal immigrant” in print, without more evidence. (Though frankly, I suspect such a combination of behaviors might constitute sufficient “probable cause” to bring a few questions from any immigration agent present, if they were truly interested in enforcing the law.)

But this does not change the fact that there are estimated to be 10 million to 15 million illegal immigrants in this country at the present time, imposing massive costs on our tax-funded welfare programs, including the government schools.

‘YOUTH ROMANCE MENTORS’?

Those who violate our immigration laws, and then compound their offenses by daily committing identify theft, driving without insurance, and other crimes, are not the only law-breakers who would like to be called by more pleasantly perfumed names. This newspaper regularly receives letters speaking on behalf of pedophiles, arguing our current laws against adults having sex with children are a mere cultural aberration. Down through the ages, many cultures have seen nothing wrong in an older person taking a child “under his wing,” as it were, to “teach them the ropes” of sexuality. But it’s hard to have a calm debate on this subject when these gentle souls face such hate-filled terms as “pederast” and “child molester,” we’re informed. Surely this discussion could proceed on a calmer footing if a less judgmental term were employed.

Imagine now that Agent Jones is back before Congress, testifying that the Internet has proven a fruitful new ground for these law-breakers to recruit youthful victims.

“What we find the child molesters are doing …” the agent begins.

“Wait,” a congressgal interrupts him. “You can’t call these individuals ‘child molesters’ before a judge has had the opportunity to examine their cases. That’s demonizing an entire population, many of whose circumstances may be at variance from your judgmental stereotype. Maybe his belt just accidentally came undone as he walked through that playground. So in your testimony here today, I’d like you to refer only to ‘youth romance mentors.’ Could you do that for me, please, Special Agent Jones?”

Look at the history of attempts to come up with a succinct, accurate term which won’t lead folks like professors Vazquez and Marouf to claim they’re “offended.”

In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower became alarmed that more than a million aliens were illegally crossing our border each year. Eisenhower appointed General Joseph Swing as INS Commissioner and launched “Operation Wetback.” Some 750 agents targeted agricultural areas with a goal of 1,000 apprehensions per day. By the end of July, over 50,000 illegal aliens had been caught in California and Arizona.

It’s widely stated as fact, today, that “There are millions of ’em; we can’t round them ALL up and deport them.” In fact, si se puede. It’s estimated that in addition to the 50,000 illegals actually rounded up by July of 1954, some 488,000 additional illegal aliens left voluntarily, for fear of being apprehended. That’s quite a “multiplier”!

Obviously, in 1954, “wetbacks,” a slang term meant to imply these aliens had so recently swum the Rio Grande that their clothes were still wet, was considered an acceptable usage.

Over the decades, probably because the term was being unfairly used as an epithet for any resident of Hispanic heritage — even solid U.S. citizens whose ancestors had been living in Santa Fe when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock — “wetback” fell out of favor, to be replaced by “illegal alien.”

Fine. I generally lament the language becoming more bureaucratized and less colorful, but if the word’s use promoted racist stereotypes, let’s allow the word “wetback” to pass away, unlamented.

But then we were told “illegal alien” was also unacceptable. “After all, they didn’t come here on space ships!” those who want to restrict our free speech on this issue took to quipping.

It’s a clever sound bite, but absurd. Look up “alien.” It means “belonging to another country or people; foreign.” It can also mean “a foreign-born resident in a county who has not become a naturalized citizen.” Only down at the bottom have our dictionaries recently added “an hypothetical being in or from outer space.”

No adult using the term “illegal alien” thinks they come from Mars. “Alien” is a fine word, accurate and succinct, in use for centuries, from the Latin “alienus.”

Nonetheless, “illegal alien” went on the Orwellian Newspeak verboten list, to be replaced by “illegal immigrant” … which we’re now told we can’t use, either.

What formulation would please professors Vazquez, Marouf, et al.? On June 20, a Miami Herald editorial congratulated, by name, four young “immigrants” for walking from Miami to Washington to plead for “Dream Act” amnesty for illegals under age 30, a wish which President Obama promptly granted (not through legislation, but by executive order). Further down, the editorial writers noted these young people “took great risks,” because “some of them faced deportation back to their parents’ home country.” Since LEGAL immigrants wouldn’t face deportation for political activism, it’s pretty clear the Miami editorial writers in this case were using the word “immigrants” to mean “illegal immigrants.” The danger here is that, once such purposely misleading terminology becomes standard, those of us who favor INCREASED legal immigration by English-speaking Asians, Africans, and others with useful trades or job skills, but favor enforcement of existing immigration laws through deportation of illegals, will be condemned as “anti-immigration.”

CONTROLLING THE OPPONENTS’ LANGUAGE

Come on. The goal here is to demonize as an insensitive racist thug anyone who dares to speak out clearly and succinctly, without clogging up his or her sentences with mealy-mouthed euphemisms and disclaimers, on this issue of massive public policy importance, saying “The presence of 10 million to 15 million illegal immigrants in our midst is swamping our tax-funded public schools, driving up costs to the point where teachers have to be laid off, costing us billions to teach ‘English as a Second Language’ to children who are here illegally, and meantime retarding the progress of the English-speaking children for whom we built these schools in the first place.”

The purpose is to demonize as a “racist” (despite the fact that illegal aliens are not a racial group, but rather lawbreakers of virtually every race and nationality) the speaker and thus forbid anyone access to our newspapers or broadcast TV and radio who might choose to say “The presence of 10 to 15 million illegal immigrants is pushing our public hospitals and their emergency rooms to the verge of bankruptcy. These illegals improperly use these high-tech, sophisticated, life-saving emergency rooms as the equivalent of public health clinics for sniffles and belly aches, frequently with no intention of ever paying their bills.”

The purpose is to stop anyone from asking, any longer, why Congress can’t decide how many immigrants to admit from where — why English-speaking would-be immigrants with useful job skills sit cooling their heels in Africa and Asia and Eastern Europe, while illiterates with no job skills take their places simply because of the accident of a shared land border.

(And no, after the next amnesty, the politicians will not “seal the border,” any more than they did in 1986. Ask them, once they’ve “sealed the border,” whether we can put minefields on our side. I’ve tried. They express shock and horror. Why? No one can die in a minefield on our aside of a “sealed border” … so their definition of the word “sealed” obviously remains different from ours.)

The left realized long ago that if they can control (through intimidation, in this case, playing on the fears of politically correct editors that anyone might ever think them “racists”) the LANGUAGE used in a debate, then the debate if more than half won before it begins. I happen to be pro-choice, but I’ll tell you that if I can convince the sponsors and moderator to change a debate topic from “Should doctors kill unborn babies” to “Do women have a right to reproductive freedom despite the wishes of the womb-slavers,” that debate is as good as over.

This is all a campaign of “Politically Correct” censorship of our speech designed to divert and blunt — with claims of “racism” — the straightforward statement that a nation that cannot control who comes here and votes has no sovereignty and cannot survive as a nation. The goal here is to leave the American public with no publicly discussable option other than another amnesty — many times larger than the Reagan-era amnesty of 1986 — which will open the floodgates and encourage tens of million more to come here illegally and bankrupt our social services — while worthy would-be immigrants die waiting in line everywhere else in the world.

(Mind you, collapsing our post-1912 welfare state and repealing the taxes that support it are worthy goals in and of themselves. But is this really the way you want it done?)

And once those tens of millions are here, their friends the “Reconquista” academics can next be counted on to militate for their being granted the vote, since anything else would be “undemocratic.” Our elections will then increasingly be swung to the left by a massive new colony of persons with little interest in assimilating into mainstream America, and with little knowledge of our traditions of the free market and constitutional, limited government.

And we won’t even be allowed to write or talk about it, any more, in plain English.

15 Comments to “Si, se puede”

  1. Mr. No Says:

    Vin, since wetback is not allowed and is English then use the word mojado.

  2. Leo Fassbinder Says:

    Vin, I agree with your logic about language and the debate, but in the end our economy still needs these workers (and the other foreign workers you mention). Immigration has always been a divisive issue for libertarians.

  3. emdfl Says:

    Ther’s nothing “immigrant” about them if they aren’t here legally. The correct term is “invaders” if they aren’t legal.

  4. Constitutional Charlie Says:

    Vin, I agree with most if not all of what you have to say in this article. We need to stop the “Democracy” and restore the Republic. We need to make the government accountable to the people. As far as needing these immigrants for the jobs mentioned by Leo, we need the jobs for the people that are here legally. It sucks what it is doing to our economy because it’s driving the cost of medical treatment up as you point out. So then we have to pay more for the fruits and veggies not because they are paying employees a decent wage but because the Hospitals have to raise rates to make ends meet, then the insurance companies have to raise rates to be able to pay the Hospitals, then the oil companies have to raise the rates to pay for insurance, then the the grocery stores have to raise rates to pay for the fuel to get groceries to the stores, now the Hospitals are raising rates again to pay for food and it costs more to ride in an ambulance because of fuel and all the other overhead caused by the illegals. It’s a huge viscous cycle and a person could go on and on. IT”S TIME TO WAKE UP AMERICA!

  5. Anton Sherwood Says:

    How about if I demonize you (that’s an impersonal ‘you’ if you prefer) for denying my natural right to do commerce with whom I choose?

    Heck, I don’t mind the word “illegal”: it says more about those who support immoral legislation than about those who’d rather live and let live.

  6. Jerry A. Pipes Says:

    Sorry Vin, you missed the mark on this one. The bank robber example works because the banks can confirm that they were robbed, and therefore are victims of a crime. Who is the victim when a person seeking better opportunities for themselves and their family simply crosses an imaginary line drawn in the sand by politicians? If the only answer to that question is taxpayers who are footing the bill for the government handouts that these immigrants are using (presumably without paying for), then your ire should be directed at the source of the handouts, not the immigrant.

  7. Vin Says:

    Sorry, Jerry, but as I have pointed out before: A small group of freedom lovers buy property in the wilderness and set up a free-market society without taxation or welfare. Hearing word of our prosperity, a group of refugees from the urban welfare state WHO OUTNUMBER US arrive and settle next door. We tolerate this because we believe in freedom of movement. Soon they hold “elections for the whole valley” in which they invite us to participate, voting to impose taxes on “the rich” (us) to fund a government-run school, a Child Welfare department, a tax-funded medical clinic, a jail for drug users, etc. We say “Nice try, but we’re not paying or participating; you have no jurisdiction over us.” They contact the governor in the distant state capital, who sends National Guard troops to make us “obey the will of the majority of valley residents as reflected in the one-man-one-vote election.”

    Where did we make our mistake? In not driving off the leeches at gunpoint within 72 hours, I suspect — perhaps generously offering them some water and pemmican for their (continuing) journey. “Immigration” can be allowed under such circumstances only for small, manageable numbers of people who bear the obligation to convince us in advance they’re eager to adopt our liberty-based principles.

    This “put anything to a majority vote — including your property rights” problem would remain even if we STIPULATE that I’d have far less problem with people crossing at will over “imaginary lines drawn by governments” once said governments repealed all their post-1913 welfare state enactments … a stipulating which I always make.

    (note above: “Mind you, collapsing our post-1912 welfare state and repealing the taxes that support it are worthy goals in and of themselves. But is this really the way you want it done?”)

    In the real world, I am currently taxed — pretty massively — to fund government youth internment camps swamped with non-English speaking youths, expensive and high-tech emergency rooms approaching systemic failure because they’re clogged with illegal aliens inappropriately using these “free” services for kids with sniffles and belly aches, etc. Yet the only response I’m “allowed” is to say, “Oh well, I suppose I have to tolerate it until The People in Their Wisdom choose to elect 268 capital-L Libertarians to Congress to repeal a century worth of welfare state all at one blow”?

    That’s a recipe for impotence, despair, and suicide.

    *I* am the victims of these leeches, every time taxes are seized from my paycheck or cash-register payment, as are those whose identities are stolen as these invaders buy and use fake Social Security numbers, those who attempt to sue them after a car crash and discover that to our courts the culprits “don’t exist and aren’t worth tracking down, since that would be an act of racism, anyway.” Our current system is far from perfect, but the executive swears an oath to enforce the laws, the Constitution grants the Congress the power to control immigration, and they have passed a set of laws which would have that effect if enforced.

    (Not only won’t the Obamney-Rombama crowd not enforce the laws, themselves, they sue Arizona for trying to do it FOR them.)

    I have plenty of ire to go around for government officials paid like kings who decline to enforce the laws. But the ire in THIS column is directed to those in the media (including those who refused to run the column above in the July 1 Review-Journal) who have now begun to refer to “illegal immigrants” simply as “immigrants,” thus allowing them to revile as “anti-immigration” those of us who would actually favor HIGHER rates of legal immigration for English-speaking persons with useful trades and skills, but who want to see current laws enforced to deport ILLEGAL immigrants.

    We can’t have the debate if they bar us — by covering their ears and shrieking “I’m offended! I can’t hear your hate speech! I’m offended!” from using words that accurately describe and distinguish what we’re talking about.

    — Vin

  8. Anton Sherwood Says:

    Are there any credible surveys on whether people with abundant experience of corruption tend to favor bigger government?

    Meanwhile, criminalizing casual kindness won’t affect our culture, right?

  9. Las Vegas newspaper caves in to the politically correct crowd and uses ‘undocumented’ instead of ‘illegal’ « 4TH ST8 Says:

    […] certain blogger I know blew major holes in that bogus argument with this rather amusing hypothetical: Imagine that an FBI […]

  10. John Brook Says:

    Perhaps the correct word is “Invaders.”

  11. Dave Says:

    Vin,
    You’re 100% correct on this one. The years I spent in agriculture in the Peoples Republic of Kalifornia tells me how accurate you are in this article. I watched what at one time was a pretty decent place to live turn into a stinking sewer over full of illegals who have bred that state into a tower of babble. These illegals for the most part are products of their racism who are Hell bent on retaking all of “atzlan” for mexico. These uneducated masses directed by such anti-American groups like MEChA and LARAZA are all about Reconquista and the dumb American is paying for it with his tax dollars. Arizona is going down the tube thanks to the libtards also. So I live in Idaho in a small town full of people like me who have had enough. I read all the time posts from people in places like Chicago stating that the “Wet Back” is not a problem. More libtards with no clue. If these imbecile leftists had to live with the BS that comes with this Liberal created mess, perhaps they might get their heads out of their butts. probably not.
    Thanks for the great article. Those who disagree with you have no clue.

  12. Agent Says:

    I can tell you that given the ability the majority of immigration agents would arrest illegals. We are under direct orders to look the other way and to our dismay let illegals walk through the door. Condemn the toothless administrative laws and the administration that prohibits such arrests. The last time I looked it is illegal to cross a sovereign nations borders without insection. These people of every race and nationilty steal citizens identities to further their own agendas with no reguards for the laws they break. Prosecuting attorneys fail to file charges and they get off scott free. Please educate yourself or you are just as ignorant as the race card sympathizers.

  13. Anton Sherwood Says:

    When you criminalize attempts to earn an honest living, don’t be surprised if the people affected by that burden turn to criminal means to protect themselves.

  14. Agent Says:

    Wow, and that makes it okay. People who make an honest living do not do so after committing a crime.

  15. Anton Sherwood Says:

    There’s nothing dishonest about breaking an arbitrary or unjust “law”.