Ben Carson Follows Up on Slavery Remarks: 'You Can Be an Involuntary Immigrant'

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24. Other examples of "involuntary" immigrants

Thousands of French and Austrian Jews transported by railcar to Auschwitz -- immigrants
Thousands of American POWs who were captured in the Philippines during WWII and transferred to, and died in, Japanese slave camps -- immigrants.
The Malaysians being held "hostage" by North Korea -- immigrants.

According to the Oxford English dictionary, an immigrant is someone who comes to live permanently in a foreign country. Now, its true that the definition doesn't distinguish between voluntary and involuntary immigration, but implicit in the definition is the notion of intent -- did the person intend to come to live permanently in a foreign country. Slaves didn't intend to live permanently in the US. Hell, they didn't intend to come here at all. It was someone else's intent, just as it was the intent of the Nazis, the Japanese, and the North Koreans in the examples above, not the intent of their captives.