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Otherwise, how do we know if they're really people or not?
No. Wait. An undocumented worker is still a person. Therefore the word undocumented (like "documented"
is meaningless, except to the outside doubter. Surely it can't be ungrammatical and mean that we haven't documented that they work.
It's like calling somebody an "accused thief"--an accused person who steals. I know I'd be proud to be accused of being a person. Now, the idea that I steal, that's a different matter. I'd hate to be a person accused of theft. But "accused" can only, in proper English, modify "person".
Even worse are the semantics of "alleged." The phrase "alleged criminal" is an insult--an alleged person who crimes. Who accuses a person of being a person?
Ideology diminishes linguistic competence *and* performance as we strive for complete obeisance of substance to form. Then we complain that facts aren't meaningful, and push allegories and frames as rational modes of thinking.
We're screwn.
I don't know about you, but I don't remember choosing where to be born, I don't remember standing in the departure gates for California as a baby soul, waiting for some random conception.
My last European ancestor arrived in the U.S.A. in the mid nineteenth century. The majority of my ancestors didn't come here for the opportunity; they were fleeing horrors in Europe or English oppression. Few had any sort of immigration documentation, they jumped off the ship and hit the ground running.
My wife's family is in many ways more U.S. American than I am. Her ancestors were shoved out of the United States by force, fleeing to Mexico and Canada. They returned to the U.S.A. as immigrants in the twentieth century.
If the U.S.A. turns totally to shit, yes, I will walk. Legally or not.
It's in everyone's best interest that nations, including are own, don't turn to shit.
Everyone is a potential refugee, even within these United States.
During the Great Depression there were plenty of Californians willing to dehumanize refugees from other states.
"Oakies" and "white trash" were not terms of endearment.
Neither is "illegals."
tell us is a bad, bad liberal fixation and is responsible for many of the world's problems.
