Frequent readers may notice this is a post in a new category, journalism. This is a category about journalism in general. Not journalism where I work.
This entry contains updated citations. Both references to online or secondary sources have since been bolstered with offline and online primary sources.
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists recently implored the media to stop using “illegal” to describe people who do not have the legal right to live or work in the United States.
As a child of an immigrant, I have a few opinions on immigration law in general, but I will not go into those here. Rather, I’m just going to consider what NAHJ is asking journalists to do.
NAHJ is concerned with the increasing use of pejorative terms to describe the estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the United States. NAHJ is particularly troubled with the growing trend of the news media to use the word “illegals” as a noun, shorthand for “illegal aliens”. Using the word in this way is grammatically incorrect and crosses the line by criminalizing the person, not the action they are purported to have committed. NAHJ calls on the media to never use “illegals” in headlines.
Shortening the term in this way also stereotypes undocumented people who are in the United States as having committed a crime. Under current U.S. immigration law, being an undocumented immigrant is not a crime, it is a civil violation. Furthermore, an estimated 40 percent of all undocumented people living in the U.S. are visa overstayers, meaning they did not illegally cross the U.S. border.
Going into nitpick mode, I have to wonder if they’d be just as upset, grammatically speaking, with use of other adjectives as nouns, like “unemployed,” “homeless,” or “homebound.” Grammarians sure aren’t upset over illegal: the Merriam-Webster online dictionary (which may or may not be the same as Webster’s New World Dictionary, the standard in U.S. print journalism) allows “illegal” as a noun, specifically to describe an “illegal alien.” (UPDATE: My copy of Webster’s New World Dictionary also allows the use of illegal as a noun for the same purpose.)
NAHJ’s point about the use of the word “illegals” as a noun is not the crux of their argument. Rather, they eschew the terms “alien,” “illegal alien,” “illegal immigrant,” and “illegal” (yes, as a noun), and instead prefer “undocumented immigrant” and “undocumented worker”, because they are not saddled with the emotional baggage that the word “illegal” carries. They also say to avoid mentioning “immigrant” unless it is relevant to the story (a point with which I agree).
The absence of suggested alternative terms that include “legal” anywhere in them makes me think their motive is really about framing stories about people living and working in the U.S. illegally without having to confront the issue of legality. I also have to wonder how accurate the “undocumented” terms can be.
Consider, for example, a person who came to the country on a student visa, and allowed their paperwork to lapse. Such a person is certainly not “undocumented” in any sense, because the government has a registration of their presence in the country. However, this same example was cited by NAHJ as a person to describe as “undocumented”:
Illegal immigrant
While many national news outlets use the term “illegal immigrant,” this handbook calls for the discussion and re-evaluation of its use. Instead of using illegal immigrant, alternative labels recommended are “undocumented worker” or “undocumented immigrant.” Illegal immigrant is a term used to describe the immigration status of people who do not have the federal documentation to show they are legally entitled to work, visit or live here. People who are undocumented according to federal authorities do not have the proper visas to be in the United States legally. Many enter the country illegally, but a large number of this group initially had valid visas, but did not return to their native countries when their visas expired. Some former students fall into the latter category. The term criminalizes the person rather than the actual act of illegally entering or residing in the United States without federal documents.
NAHJ offers an estimate that 40% of people remaining in the U.S. illegally are registered, but with lapsed documentation. So, really, undocumented is an accurate word about 60% of the time, since the other 40% registered with the federal government.
Let’s reexamine a point from the first time I quoted them:
Under current U.S. immigration law, being an undocumented immigrant is not a crime, it is a civil violation.
That is provocative, but it seems incomplete. I looked at the law briefly and saw that there is a “civil penalty” for failure to leave when ordered, and also for improper entry. But I also saw that failure to register as an alien after 30 days of being in the U.S. without a visa is a misdemeanor, which is a crime. I wonder how many journalists believe living in the U.S. for more than 30 days without registering is not a crime after reading the NAHJ press release.(UPDATE: The U.S. Code server at the House of Representatives web site also supports this.)
I really don’t like the way NAHJ handled this. I think they could have called for discussion and re-evaluation of the use of the term “illegal immigrant” in two or three paragraphs instead of their proscription of anything with “illegal” in it, citing poorly-supported factoids as gospel. That’s hardly a discussion.
So, if they really want a discussion, here are some of my points.
- It is a crime to employ people who are unauthorized to work in the U.S. Shouldn’t we do more reporting on the criminals that employ unauthorized workers? And wouldn’t we use a pejorative term to refer to these corporations, partnerships, and individuals?
- If the federal government uses the term “illegal alien”, is it necessarily wrong to use the term in the context of a story that deals with immigration law?
- How do you write accurately about a person who is not legally authorized to live or work in the country without referencing the word “legal” or its opposite, and without using a word with a pejorative connotation? “unauthorized worker” sounds negative; “immigration law violator” is even more severe. But, the alternative proposed by NAHJ, “undocumented,” does not seem very accurate. Perhaps there is no polite way to be concise about it. Perhaps instead of a term, it should be a phrase: “people who live or work in the United States without legal authorization.”
- There is a reason so many people are in the United States without authorization to be here. People who live here illegally want to be here, and many people want to keep them here, making their illegal presence sustainable. So, isn’t mentioning the question of legality important, especially because we are reporting on an issue that is at its core about freedom, about pursuit of happiness, and about the desire to live where one wants to live and work where one wants to work? If such a pursuit is illegal, shouldn’t the public be told that their government considers these people to be here illegally so they can think critically about whether they agree with the government? Isn’t that more important than worrying about whether people feel bad when their lack of legal status is described?
I used online sources for all of my counterpoints, and I am not a columnist, so I don’t consider this a thoroughly journalistic rebuttal of their press release. But if Cornell University’s copy of the U.S. Code is current, and Merriam-Webster is serving up pages from Webster’s New World dictionary online, it essentially means their PR would have one correction and one clarification (or two corrections, depending on how pedantic the editor reading it might be). In such a case, NAHJ should issue a corrected press release.
I agree with the idea of describing things more accurately and with less emotionally-charged words. However, I don’t think the NAHJ’s substitutes as offered in their press release are suitable replacements.