Thread: "Illegals" label denies people their dignity

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'Illegals' label denies people their dignity
By L.A. CHUNG
San Jose Mercury News
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Did you see what happened in San Jose on Monday? Or in Oakland, Santa Ana, Las Vegas, and Phoenix? In New York, and Washington, D.C.? In Bloomington, Ind.?

Twenty-five thousand people filled San Jose's City Hall plaza. Five hundred thousand in the Capitol Mall in Washington. Record numbers were seen in communities across the country.

The swelling, exuberant crowds -- and the passion -- of those who marched surprised me. It surprised organizers all over the country. But it shouldn't have.

That's what happens when you undermine people's very dignity.

When the tenor of the heated national debate is colored by words that virtually question your very right to exist -- illegals -- who wouldn't take to the streets? When lawmakers want to make people felons for coming here to work, when they try to make socializing, ministering, helping those people a criminal act, why wouldn't you go out into the streets?

Listen to me carefully here, and take note: People are not illegal. Actions may well be, but human beings are never illegal.

A dialogue-stopper

As a wordsmith it hurts my ears to hear adjectives turned into nouns. But it makes my blood boil to hear people reduced to a word that denies their existence.

Use that, and anything you say to me afterward will not be heard. You've already shown me your colors. Your sloppy thinking. Your racism.

No wonder we have difficulty having a reasoned debate about public policy. We start off offending people and then we're surprised how hard it is to make progress from there.

No wonder so many people were proudly asserting their existence -- and why so many supported them.

``It was really empowering and energizing, to be a part of something positive and proactive -- instead of reacting,'' said Anh Phan, a staff member of the Organization of Chinese Americans. She marched in Washington, where she heard people with family stories like many in her own community.

Her group believes in immigration reform, that the system has long been broken and that fair, comprehensive reform would help all of us.

Why is it that the illegal act of crossing a border to work identifies any person?

Is that act worthy of denigrating people's very existence, any more than, say, executive greed?

Keeping our humanity

If we're playing that game, let's see newscasters and politicians call Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom or Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco ``illegals'' for a change. Hey, if you're serving 25 years to life in the largest case of corporate fraud in U.S. history the way Ebbers is, wouldn't that qualify as law-breaking, big time? Or surely the excesses of looting Tyco of $150 million to pay for an $18 million Manhattan apartment or lavish birthday party in Sardinia, compounded with securities fraud and falsifying business records, could make Kozlowski an ``illegal.'' Oh, and $430 million reaped from artificially inflating stock value.

Imagine Martha Stewart, with her federal conviction as ``an illegal.'' Or the Queen of Mean? Leona Helmsley, jailed and convicted for tax evasion, could have been called the ``Imperious Illegal.''

See how ugly that sounds? And yet there are those who want to pick on people who simply want to work for a better life for their families.

``When people do that they are losing a sense of their own humanity and heart -- to view people as illegal as opposed to a human being,'' Phan said sadly.

No wonder people went out to the streets. You're talking about their mothers, their fathers, their sisters, their brothers.

They went onto the streets, taking back their dignity.


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Contact L.A. Chung at lchung@mercurynews.com or (40 920-5280.

``When people do that they are losing a sense of their own humanity and heart -- to view people as illegal as opposed to a human being,'' Phan said sadly.

No wonder people went out to the streets. You're talking about their mothers, their fathers, their sisters, their brothers.

They went onto the streets, taking back their dignity.

Please no more garbage; they can have all the dignity they deserve if they only go back to their countries. I swear, I will never again, call them Illegals.

I replied to the author with the following:
The label "illegal alien" is the correct legal term. "Undocumented" alien is also used.

Illegal aliens are, of course, human.

However, they do not have the right to be in the United States. They are welcome to be "human" in their own country.

I suggest that you read the United States Code. You might learn something.


500.20 Definitions.
For purposes of this part:

(n) Illegal alien means any person who is not lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the United States or who has not been authorized by the Attorney General to accept employment in the United States.

UNITED STATES CODE

TITLE 8--ALIENS AND NATIONALITY

CHAPTER 12--IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY

SUBCHAPTER I--GENERAL PROVISIONS

Sec. 1101. Definitions

(a) As used in this chapter--
(1) The term ``administrator'' means the official designated by the
Secretary of State pursuant to section 1104(b) of this title.
(2) The term ``advocates'' includes, but is not limited to, advises,
recommends, furthers by overt act, and admits belief in.
(3) The term ``alien'' means any person not a citizen or national of
the United States.


In my opinion, this is the best response to those who object to the term "illegal." There isn't much they can say.

Thanks dataman......I keep hearing everything is offensive, racist, etc. but I can't call a rose a tulip just because it's a flower. Illegal is the correct term.

"DIGNITY"

Is that what you call traipsing into our country with a bun in the oven to drop it in our country when you don't have a job or any way to support yourself or your kid except by stealing a job from an American?

"DIGNITY"

Is that what you call streaming like ants across the border, ignoring Keep Out signs, cat and mousing Border Patrol, running down our highways in traffic like a herd of wild cattle to achieve what? Break American Law from the minute you step across that border?

"DIGNITY"

Is that what you call getting fake papers and fake social security numbers to set up shop and pretend you are an American Citizen to deceive employers and social services into thinking you are an American when you are only imposters?

"DIGNITY"

Is that what you call whining for rights in a country that owes you nothing?

"DIGNITY"

Is that what you call running drugs, raping women, organizing gangs, and using machetes to whack your way through to an Illegal American Dream?

"DIGNITY"

You can not be afforded "dignity" when you have dishonored yourself and the country from whence you came by entering the United States illegally and mooching off the best friends you otherwise might have had.

There is no "dignity" in being an illegal alien in the United States and believe me, there never will be not for you or your offspring.

When the tenor of the heated national debate is colored by words that virtually question your very right to exist -- illegals -- who wouldn't take to the streets?

Oh deliver me from the purple rhetoric....as a matter of fact they don't have the right to exist in the US of A...their rights and perhaps their remaining shreds of dignity belong somewhere else...but not here.

MJ

Hey, I just had an idea!

Why don't we tell the "illegals", there is a big protest....just follow the arrows.....all the way......home.