From 'Illegal Alien' to 'Migrant': Why We Shouldn't Given In To Political Correctness

The legal term is 'illegal alien.' The PCs insisted--inexplicably--that it was "offensive." But, then, since almost everything is, to their mind, it's not clear why that should have mattered to anyone. Then we got 'illegal immigrant.' But immediately on the heels of that we were told it was all wrong, because "no human being is illegal." Though, of course, there's no suggestion otherwise in the term. An illegal contractor is not illegal qua person. Only qua contractor. An illegal contractor is a person who contracts illegally. An illegal immigrant is a person who immigrates illegally. No one ever honestly thought otherwise.
   But this offense is largely tactical. It doesn't have to make sense.
   Shifting to 'illegal immigrant' made it easy for progressives to shorten it to 'immigrant.' Thus easy to claim that opponents of illegal immigration are opponents of immigration--conservatives are against illegal immigrants, we're now routinely told.
   Now, of course, the immigrants are merely "undocumented"...as if they'd merely lost their library cards. And, of course, they're not even immigrants anymore--they're migrants. They move in no specific direction. Coming in? Leaving? You don't know. Perhaps they're sneaking out of the country...
   The political battle more and more seems to be between those who think we should have some immigration laws and those who think we should have none--or damn close to it. As is so commonly the case with the PC left, their shrieking about terminology is in the service of their more substantive goals. It's a jockeying for conceptual position, as when they insist that some men be referred to as women; conceding the terminological point allows them to assert, e.g., that such women should be able to use the women's room...just like any other women!
   For this and many other reasons, it's almost never a good idea to give in to PC linguistic demands.