“Illegal Immigrant”

Last week, Adam Serwer defended the use of the term “illegal immigrant” against Mary Moreno’s criticisms. Today, an argument from Rinku Sen has him rethinking his view.

My own take on this is primarily that I don’t like to use a term that many people experience as dehumanizing, and I also don’t like to use verbiage like “undocumented immigrant” that scans as kind of Newspeak effort to avoid the issue.

But it’s often possible to write around the whole terminological dispute. I also think it’s generally a mit misleading to write about US-Mexico border crossings primarily through a frame of immigration. If you look at this wall on the border near Tijuana, it hardly captures the full scope of the issue to say that this is a barrier to prevent Mexicans from immigrating to the United States and permanently settling there. It’s also a barrier to prevent Americans from walking on the beach into Mexico and buying some tacos. Or to prevent Mexicans from waking walking across the border to sell some beach towels and umbrellas to Americans and then walking back home with pockets full of money. The increasing militarization of the US-Mexico border has tended to increase the duration of time that Mexicans who come to the US to work illegally spend in our country, but both traditionally and under a saner policy most people who cross the border would probably just go back.

People should remember that not only are wage levels higher in the United States, the price level is higher too. Consequently, the best way for Mexicans willing to migrate to maximize their real wealth is to come to the US to work and then take their money back to Mexico. Temporary labor migration of this kind has traditionally been the goal of most work-oriented border crossing and the easiest way to prevent it from turning into illegal labor and semi-permanent settlement is to create a legal channel.

None of this per se answers the terminological issue, but it’s just to gesture in the direction of the idea that we should try to get more specific about what it is we’re talking about. There are laws governing crossing the border, laws governing employment, laws governing citizenship, etc. When I was camping and paddling down the St Croix River, I crossed the US-Canada border without authorization a number of times and probably broke some kind of laws but I was never an “illegal immigrant to Canada,” I was a kid on a canoe trip.