It is all about the language

Calling immigrants criminals is insulting

Simple definition of illegal immigration

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently said calling those people who have immigrated to the United States without the proper documentation criminals was insulting.

I am not sure I agree. I mean in more ways than one, immigrants without documentation have broken the law in the United States.

First, they failed to get the appropriate documentation at the border. That is in violation of federal law.

Now, if they got a job without a work permit, then they violated another law and subjected their employer to possible fines and legal sanctions.

If they gave a Social Security number to anyone, then that would have been fraud and another crime.

If they drove a car without a valid driver’s license, then that is a violation of state law.

I mean you really can go on and on, making such a list. The question then becomes at what point does such a person become a “criminal”?

I suppose you have to find them, arrest them, try them, find them guilty of violating whatever laws they have broken and then you can call them a criminal. I suppose if you do it before such a determination then you are defaming them … which is insulting them.

But the real issue here is about the language. You see if you call a person a criminal – even if they have done something criminal – then you putting them in a lower status then those people who don’t break the law.

Unfortunately, we all break the law, probably daily. Of course it is little laws like speed limits, jaywalking and improper lane changes, but it still is breaking the law. Most of us just wink at people who do such things and just rack it up to their not getting caught.

My take from what Justice Sotameyer is saying is that we should just “wink” at those people who are violating US immigration law.

However, I don’t agree, but then I have a different perspective. I am married to a non-citizen. We had to get the proper documentation and then go through the process to get first a work permit and then a permanent residence card … which took more time than I hoped and cost more than I expected, but we paid both prices in order to stay within the law – before all the post-9/11 changes that went into effect in the the latter half of the Oughts.

I read these stories, truly sad stories, about families torn apart when parents are deported but their anchor children remain behind and I don’t have a solution.

I really don’t think we need to ignore our law, because if we ignore it, what other laws should we just start ignoring? And if we as “men” (meaning individual people) decide what laws we will obey, then we truly become a nation of men and not of law.

Being a nation of law is what sets the US apart from most other countries. It is one of the good things about the country, although views like Justice Sotameyer’s tend to push the envelope toward less equality before the law and more injustice in name of the law.

What people like Justice Sotameyer and others associated with the progressive view of this issue are doing is seizing control of the language and warping it to hide the fact that undocumented immigrants are in fact illegal aliens. In many countries, if it doesn’t get you quickly escorted to the border, it does get you locked up in jail (with the latter more often than not the consequence).

Once they control the language used to describe those individuals who anywhere else would be called criminals or illegals, then they control the debate and can shape the issue any way they want to do.

The key is that if you control the words, then you control the people. I think George Orwell wrote a book on that called 1984. Well, it may be three decades or so late, but I am beginning to suspect that “newspeak” is become the lingua franca of 21st America.