Kathleen Carroll, executive editor and Senior Vice President of the AP, clarified that the recent ban is one of several undertakings taken by the organization to purge the stylebook of labels due to some negative implications that they carry. Journalists are now expected to use the word “illegal” only to describe an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally, but not to distinguish a person. Organizations that advocate immigration adamantly argue that the AP’s decision was necessary to lighten the general sentiment of those who are here illegally.
I beg to differ. Actions define an individual. Crossing the border without permission is an illegal act, thus can accurately define the offender as an illegal immigrant. Though immigration advocates deem that using the derogatory term only to label an action relieves the word of its offense, the negative label will not go away.
Following the ban, the argument “No human being is illegal” was released by the racial justice website ColorLines with the launch of its “Drop the I-Word” campaign. However, the fact that some human beings are in fact illegal remains. These include those who have overstayed their visas or crossed the border illegally. Such individuals absolutely cannot be accepted as legal immigrants since they have not taken the legal route to America; thus they deserve the title, “illegal immigrants.” Rewording a perfectly distinct term in the hopes that it will give a positive aura to a perpetually controversial policy is a vain attempt. It will not be long before the euphemism will revive the same negative implication as its predecessor.
This has happened to previous efforts to eliminate a term of its derisive meaning. When politicians associated the term “racial preferences” with the negative sentiments they had toward the policy, the term was replaced with “affirmative action.” Now, the replacement is taken just as offensively.
Furthermore, the AP’s decision to ban the term “illegal immigrant” might go one step further and harm legal inhabitants. If the prominent distinction between legal and illegal immigrants is destroyed, it would result in a misfortune in which the legal immigrants would be unfairly stigmatized.
Merely rephrasing a term that already carries a negative meaning will not lighten its existing bitterness. The only way to avoid such an issue is to reform the law to reduce the number of illegal immigrants. Until then, the controversial issue of illegal immigrants will remain—and with a feeling of hostility.
