Vin Suprynowicz

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.