The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the noun “alien” as “a person of another family, race, or nation.” Calling someone who crosse...
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the noun “alien” as “a person of another family, race, or nation.”
Calling someone who crosses the border an “illegal alien” is literally a textbook definition, but it’s also one that some House Democrats want completely scrubbed from political discourse.
Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro introduced a bill on Tuesday that would prohibit federal agencies from calling immigrants “aliens.” Controversial Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar co-sponsored the legislation.
In a press release announcing the bill, Castro wrote, “words matter. It’s vital that we respect the dignity of immigrants fleeing violence and prosecution in our language.”
“The words ‘alien’ and ‘illegal alien’ work to demonize and dehumanize the migrant community. They should have no place in our government’s description of human beings,” he continued.
Castro, Omar and the rest of the Democrats behind the bill are deploying the same tactic they always do when they attempt to push losing legislation on American voters: change the words.
Making terms sound less frightful (by substituting “terminating a pregnancy” for “killing babies,” for instance, or calling an unborn child “pregnancy tissue”) gives the media a way to push a narrative. If new terms are repeated often enough, voters will pick them up. It’s a psychological game.
Another recent example was when many in the establishment media called illegal aliens who were going to be raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents “undocumented families.” Of course, they ran with the change and pushed it hard to their viewing audiences, eliciting sympathy for the law-breakers.
If a lie is told enough times, many will begin to believe it. And Democrats are fantastic at telling believable lies.
But Castro didn’t just propose that words be purged. He went one step further. In defending his new bill, Castro painted all illegal aliens as acting in “good faith,” referring to their intentions of crossing the border into America.
What he and other Democrats fail to admit is that coming to America without papers is, according to the U.S. Constitution, a crime. And that makes the people who do it real criminals.
Furthermore, Castro’s statement was outright false; time and again, bad actors have crossed into the United States illegally and even taken the lives of American citizens. Those people don’t come in good faith.
So what do Castro and Omar want the government to call illegal aliens?
“The CHANGE Act … replaces [“illegal alien”] with ‘foreign national’ and ‘undocumented foreign national,’ respectively,” the press release reads.
The legislation is nothing more than the Democrats’ latest tactic to undermine President Donald Trump’s immigration policy. And altering language to make it more palatable to the masses is the first step to getting what they want.
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