Political Correctness Tag

There has been a political push to remove words like "illegal alien" or "illegal immigrant" from usage as part of political messaging by amnesty/open borders advocates. The preferred term is "undocumented," as if it's just a question of paperwork.  Once the language is redefined, it becomes a much easier sell to treat the breaking of our immigration laws as just a formality. Not only that, "illegal alien" supposedly is racist, as if illegal alien were a race, as I posted in What race is an illegal alien?

This is all a charade.  It’s the typical Color of Change race card shakedown. The advocates of eliminating the term “illegal” want to alter immigration policies.  They can’t win on the merits of open borders, so they smear others as racist. It’s just a dishonest word game using false accusations of racism as a political lever. Back to the subversive question:  What race is an illegal alien?

Today a major victory was achieved for those seeking political control of the language as AP removed the term "illegal immigrant" from its style book, ‘Illegal immigrant’ no more:

The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term “illegal immigrant” or the use of “illegal” to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that “illegal” should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.

AP has no term to replace "illegal immigrant."  Instead of the accurate term, we're going to get explanations:

illegal immigration Entering or residing in a country in violation of civil or criminal law. Except in direct quotes essential to the story, use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant. Acceptable variations include living in or entering a country illegally or without legal permission. Except in direct quotations, do not use the terms illegal alien, an illegal, illegals or undocumented. Do not describe people as violating immigration laws without attribution. Specify wherever possible how someone entered the country illegally and from where. Crossed the border? Overstayed a visa? What nationality? People who were brought into the country as children should not be described as having immigrated illegally. For people granted a temporary right to remain in the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, use temporary resident status, with details on the program lower in the story.

This is just another step towards linguistically enforced progressive politics.

With what is AP replacing "illegal immigrant"?

— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) April 2, 2013