Comment on I may swear like a pirate, but I'm a fucking PRINCIPLED pirate
Acinonyx@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
some people objectively are illegal immigrants. apparantly facts are racist now
Comment on I may swear like a pirate, but I'm a fucking PRINCIPLED pirate
Acinonyx@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
some people objectively are illegal immigrants. apparantly facts are racist now
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
I cant believe i have to explain this but…
There’s lots of ways you can refer to people. Some are respectful, some are not.
This might shock you but some parents teach their kids to be respectful of others. Avoiding labelling people in ways they might not appreciate is a good start.
It may be a “fact” that someone is an “illegal immigrant” but I’m sure you can see that term is intended to portray the person in a specific way.
Its also a fact that such a person is an undocumented migrant trying to feed their family, or maybe even an asylum seekers fleeing persecution.
So yes, representing facts in a racist way is racist. Well done.
Narauko@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
I will preface this by saying I do not agree with how this administration is enforcing immigration law, and triple disagree with how they are removing legal status from people to get easy deportations. It is being done both stupidly and cruelly. ICE should be uniformed and identifiable, and all law enforcement should be held to the highest standards.
That said, an asylum seeker is just that, an asylum seeker and not an illegal immigrant. Lumping them in with illegal immigrants to help whitewash illegal immigration is, in my opinion, as much a contributor to the problem as those claiming asylum seekers are lying. Both sides of this argument keep shoving the asylum seekers into the illegal immigrant bucket to serve their narratives and it pisses me off.
Obviously every person who illegally immigrates is doing so trying to feed themselves and/or their family better than they can in their own country, basically no one wakes up and decides to throw away their entire lives and legal status to go to another country. That does not mean laws don’t apply to them. No one on earth has a right to go to another country except through the established legal means of that country, which is why statelessness is such a terrible crime against the people who are rendered such.
Lumping in illegal immigration with things like race and slurs and calling it racist waters down racist. Basic human dignity and respect for things that are intrinsic qualities like race, gender, sexuality, etc is not the same thing as someone’s legal status. This doesn’t stop the racists, doesn’t help anyone, and weakens actual narrative.
merc@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
No, it’s just a normal term, intended to convey that the person is an immigrant, and that they didn’t follow the legal process. Those are just the basic facts about that person’s situation with respect to the law. The legality of their immigration status is often the focus of the discussion. For example, it’s easy to take advantage of illegal immigrants because they might be afraid to go to the police due to their immigration status.
The term has been in use for almost 150 years. Sometimes clinical labels become pejorative over time. But, it doesn’t seem like that’s the case here. A right-winger is much more likely to say “illegals” or “illegal aliens”, if not just using some slur like “wetback”.
Alternative terms that have been proposed are much less precise. For example, “undocumented migrant” is horrible. Not only is “migrant” less specific than “immigrant”, because immigration is a subset of migration, “undocumented” is much less accurate than “illegal”. Most people in a country illegally have documentation, they have passports, birth certificates, sometimes even local driver’s licenses. The issue isn’t that they lack documentation. The issue is that they aren’t following the laws related to migration. Others like “undocumented noncitizen” or “undocumented American” are even worse. What does “American” even mean in that context? Is a fiercely loyal British person who is legally in the US on a work visa a “documented American”?
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Describing a person as an “illegal” immigrant is dehumanizing, given that only acts can be legal or illegal, not people.
“Undocumented” immigrant is the generally accepted term.
It doesn’t really matter which you feel is the more accurate or better term. For all intents and purposes they have the same meaning, and one is clearly more dignified than the other.
merc@sh.itjust.works 22 hours ago
How so?
Yes, that’s why it’s “illegal immigrant” not “illegal person”.
Among some people, among others it’s “illegal immigrant”. Undocumented is wrong, the people have documentation, they just don’t have the legal right to reside where they do.
No, they’re both equally dignified, you’ve just been snarfing down propaganda.
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 21 hours ago
How tf is it racist to say someone is an illegal immigrant if they’re an immigrant who came in illegally? At the face of it those words can be used totally neutrally
SorryQuick@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
I mean, the words themselves are not an insult, it’s the context they are used in that make them an insult. If you don’t insult people then you don’t have to worry about what words are insults and what they aren’t.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
I don’t really understand what you’re getting at.
Obviously there are words which are in themselves an insult. There are also words which are not, and there’s a spectrum of different words in between which are more insulting or less insulting or insulting in specific circumstances.
Undocumented migrant is clearly a more dignified way to describe someone than describing them as an “illegal” immigrant.
SorryQuick@lemmy.ca 23 hours ago
There are some, but “illegal immigrant” isn’t. Calling someone a fucking idiot is an indult. Calling someone an illegal immigrant to their face can be an insult, but the words themselves are fine, it’s crazy how people are insulted by what is effectively a description. Not like idiot or moron which is obviously “tagging” someone with something they aren’t. Or calling someone an illegal immigtant when they aren’t just because you don’t like them. Undocumented migrant is fine for now, next thing you know even that’s not dignified enough. The same way retard became handicapped and suddenly out of nowhere handicap is not dignified enough, so it became disabled.