There is a fairly new campaign urging people to stop referring to the undocumented as 'illegal'. This is wrong, don't try to ignore ignorance, educate people as to what illegal means if you want to stop improper use.
The "I" Word
Shortly before the election, I saw a campaign to get people to stop using the ‘I’ word. This is incorrect. The campaign sets to demand people to not use the term Illegal when referring to undocumented immigrants. The proper thing to do is demand proper use of the word illegal. People will not understand the fallacy behind the word if they are simply told not to use it. Besides, those on the right will never stop, just because you ask them to. This will NEVER happen. Never, ever, ever-ever? Ever.
As with all good causes and actions, education is the key. I say we should embrace the word illegal and use it as often as possible to bring up the point that to a majority of undocumented, criminality has nothing to do with status. US Attorney Chris Christie has put it best in this excerpt from the New York Daily News:
New Jersey's top federal prosecutor told a Latino group it's a civil offense - not a crime - for immigrants to live in the country without proper documentation, a comment that a spokesman later said was aimed at a narrowly worded question.
U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, widely considered to be a leading GOP contender for governor next year, spoke Sunday in response to a question on illegal immigration at an open forum that grew heated.
He said living in the U.S. without immigration paperwork is "an administrative matter" that federal immigration officials are supposed to address through deportation.
"Don't let people make you believe that that's a crime that the U.S. attorney's office should be doing something about," Christie was quoted as saying in The Star-Ledger of Newark for Monday editions. "It is not."
Christie stressed that lacking immigration documents is not a crime unless the person was previously deported.
Full article at: http://www.nydailynews.com/...
In other words, a vast majority of those called illegal are being called so by people who have no proof the person is actually illegal. The thing to do is to use the word illegal in every context it fits, and when somebody uses the term without proof that all the people they are referring to, then you call them on it. The number of ‘illegals’ in the country is roughly 65% of those charged with re-entry after deportation per year, a tiny fraction of the numbers the bigots claim.
Every chance you get, use the word ‘illegal’. Use it and explain it and point to those numbers, not the number of those simply deportable. If we can master the debate on this single talking point and expand its use in proper form widely, you will notice, the anti immigration and anti Latino crowd will stop using it more often as they begin to look more and more like the uneducated and uninformed fools they are.