“Illegal.” Usually it’s a word used to describe an activity. Word association brings about concepts such as crime, drugs, or other suspicious activity. And now people. Seriously?, you ask. How are we actually referring to people as illegal in our society? Even criminals who have committed murder and are locked up for life are not called illegal- their actions are separated from them as humans, and we generally recognize this as their fellow human beings. However, there is a disturbing trend in language usage that is being fueled by our media. Many of us, including myself up to a few weeks ago, don’t even realize the dehumanizing nature of this language to the point where we ourselves use the terminology in our everyday speak. How many times have you used the expression “Illegal alien/immigrant?”
This semester, I have been immersing myself in the Chicano/Latino community through a service-learning class which allows me to volunteer at La Escuelita, an after-school tutoring and leadership program primarily for recent Latino immigrants attending area middle and high schools. This has allowed me to put faces, names, and personalities to the issue of immigration our nation is currently struggling with. The class itself, which meets once a week, sometimes off-campus at organizations such as the Minnesota Immigrant Freedom Network, addresses our society’s treatment of immigrants with a focus on our education system. It has brought subtle but important things such as the classification of immigrants as ‘illegal’ to my attention.
If there’s one main lesson I learned from working with ex-convicts over this past summer at Boaz & Ruth and now tutoring students at La Escuelita, it’s that behind the criminal label worn by these individuals there is an extremely real and interesting person worth getting to know. Therefore, referring to immigrants as ‘illegal’ is an extremely dehumanizing gesture. Additionally, it feeds into stereotypes that are already incorrect- immigrants don’t pay taxes, they are using up valuable social services, they are stealing all our jobs, etc. When communicated through the power of the media, this terminology becomes mainstream language.
Let’s illustrate this with a comparison that will hit home. The fact is, crossing the border ‘illegally’ is the equivalent to exceeding the speed limit. Most of the time, both guilty parties aren’t caught in the act. If these parties were caught, their crime would be classified as a misdemeanor by the US law. All of us who have driven and speeded are, under the law, the equivalent to someone who has crossed the border without documentation. We all would be ‘illegal drivers.’ Those of us who have written bad checks- ‘illegal check writers.’ How about shoplifting? ‘Illegal consumers,’ perhaps?
Unfortunately, there are many more offensive terms in our everyday language that don’t even fall under swearing. ‘Gay, lame, fag, just to name a few, are rooted in offensive insults. Our intentions in using this language are irrelevant; for example when we refer to an immigrant as ‘illegal’ we probably don’t intend to actually dehumanize or devalue this person or group of people. Nonetheless, the effects are the same.
Under the label, we’re all human beings with a story.
