Weekly Briefing

Five quick points regarding North Carolina's debate over "illegal aliens"

The nonsense and venom are flowing fast and furious on the far right these days. Last week, the Pope Civitas Institute and a group that calls itself Americans for Legal Immigration (or ALIPAC) both continued to do their worst to make a mountain out of the molehill over the issue of whether North Carolina should admit undocumented immigrants to its community college system. Meanwhile, over at the General Assembly, opportunistic legislators piled on.

Here some of the lowlights from these recent fulminations:

• The use of hateful language and symbols — Both Civitas and ALIPAC continued to use the derogatory and inaccurate terms "illegal aliens" and "illegals" to refer to all those present in the U.S. with imperfect immigration papers. More than once, even the usually accurate News & Observer of Raleigh lapsed into this lazy and mean spirited language. Meanwhile, most of ALIPAC's website posts also featured a graphic of what appears to be the group's crest or insignia which revolves around two crossed swords
• 37,000?? — According to Pope Civitas, the community colleges are being overrun with "illegals." Notwithstanding the official system figure of 112 students, the group claims the state has enrolled 37,000 "illegal aliens" in the system.
• Let's kick them out twice — Not content with a recent ruling by the Attorney General barring the undocumented, the same group argued that state legislators should pass a law that flat out prohibits all immigrants without proper and up-to-date immigration papers from higher education.
• Reviving Il Duce's tactics? According a to a Pope Civitas staffer's blog post, Americans could learn something from the toughs in Italy — who really know how to handle immigrants.
• How does he muster the courage? Senator and Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor, Robert Pittenger of Charlotte introduced a bill called the "N.C. Citizen Protection Act." In essence, the bill attempts to do everything possible to prevent the undocumented from having any fruitful contact with North Carolina public institutions.

Five thinking and humane responses

#1 - Acts are "illegal" or "unlawful," not humans. The debate over the term "illegal alien" is not a new one, but it deserves to be revisited. Thinking Americans have long used the terms "undocumented immigrant" or "undocumented worker." Of course, in many instances even these descriptors are unfair as well. Many people regularly dismissed as undocumented are actually refugees seeking to secure the right to stay in the country. While many of these people did not dot every "I" or cross every "T" they may have some documentation and compelling and lawful (and maybe even life or death) reason to stay. And, of course, many, many such people are children.

As the National Association of Hispanic Journalist put it in a thoughtful essay in 2006:

"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.

In addition, the association has always denounced the use of the degrading terms "alien" and "illegal alien" to describe undocumented immigrants because it casts them as adverse, strange beings, inhuman outsiders who come to the U.S. with questionable motivations. "Aliens" is a bureaucratic term that should be avoided unless used in a quote."

In short, the immigration process in this country is a vast and complex maze for anyone to negotiate and it is simply harmful and wrong to cavalierly dismiss millions of humans with the inaccurate pejorative "illegals." It makes no more sense than characterizing all Americans who regularly violate traffic laws or all companies that exceed EPA pollution control standards as "illegals." To further complicate matters by injecting symbols of war and violence is particularly unhelpful and symbolic of the absurd paranoia that grips many in the anti-immigrant community. 

#2 - The molehill grows. Notwithstanding the assertions of some, the issue of the admission of immigrants into the state university and community college system is a minor and manufactured issue. Here is what the Community College system itself has to say about the number of undocumented students

"A survey of the colleges for the 2006-07 academic year indicated that 112 curriculum degree students without proper residency documentation were enrolled among the 296,540 total number of curriculum students at that time.  The higher number of 340 undocumented students which was released in December 2007 included students who later produced sufficient documentation." 

And these students are required to pay out-of-state tuition — a fee that is actually in excess of what it costs to educate them. With his usual wit, veteran statehouse journalist Scott Mooneyham recently put it this way:

"Mind you, this brouhaha is based on numbers showing 112 out of nearly 300,000 degree- program students are here illegally. Surely the very foundations of civilized society are about to fall."

Where the 37,000 figure touted by the Pope Civitas staffers comes from is hard to say. It appears to be the byproduct of some sort of attempt to extrapolate from the number of people with Hispanic surnames in all community college programs - even those that involve so-called "continuing education" and "distance learning" programs. "Made up from whole cloth" might be another explanation.   

#3 - There is no need for legislation barring the undocumented. First of all, from a practical standpoint, the Attorney General and Community College system have already acted to exclude undocumented students. How doing it twice would help the situation is hard to understand.

More to the point, excluding these students is a dumb idea to begin with. Federal officials say there is no such requirement, the only federal court to consider the matter agrees, and it appears to be counter to the policy of virtually every other state in the union. Indeed, many states guarantee all immigrants who meet residency requirements in-state tuition. These states understand that it is in the best short and long-term interest of their citizenry to allow immigrants to educate and improve themselves. No state ever suffered for having more people seeking to educate and improve themselves.

#4 - Berlusconi's Italy is no role model. The idea of the military and renegade toughs rounding up and expelling immigrants may warm the hearts over at Pope Civitas and serve as a role model, but it ought to sicken Americans with any semblance of commitment to our country's historic role as a beacon of freedom and human rights.

#5 - Political pandering won't help either. We're all familiar with the specter of politicians from both parties attempting to play to people's worst instincts. Still, there's something especially transparent and noxious about Senator Pittenger's "NC Citizen Protection Act." From its fundamental vacuousness (just what is an "illegal alien" that he would make it "unlawful to conceal"?) to its provision for the enactment of a giant new state bureaucracy to its promise of several years in prison for those who fail to turn in their undocumented family members, the bill is an example of a campaign bill at its worst.  

Going forward

Now, in the heat of an election, is not the time to making emotional decisions about an incendiary issue like the treatment of immigrants. As Scott Moneyham put it:

"…if after the fall elections no one has died from the immigration bite, perhaps the pandering, the dread and the fear-mongering can give way to something a bit more useful."

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 8:25 am and is filed under Weekly Briefing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.