The I-word

The game of "hawks" and "doves" which I refer to below is aided by euphemism. Pro-abortion groups have long tried to make that debate about liberty by resolutely avoiding the word "abortion." No one likes to speak out against freedom. Few people are willing to defend abortion. If someone were to awake from a forty year coma, she'd have no idea what most pro-abortion discourse was actually about. All she'd hear is words like "choice," "women's health" and, occasionally, "reproductive rights."

Are we seeing the same thing in the debate over illegal immigration? As others have pointed out, the issue is almost always framed as being about immigration generally rather than immigration that is illegal. The term "undocumented immigrant" suggests someone who forgot her driver's license at home, not someone who has entered the United States in violation of the law and probably remains through fraud.

Proposals, like Sensenbrenner's bill or the proposal to build a wall, may be impractical but are attacked, instead, as "racist" and "hateful." My fellow community columnist Maria Flores (who is a bright and delightful young woman) recently likened the bill to the fugitive slave act and the Holocaust.

Calling people who support the enforcement of our immigration laws as "racist" or "fascist" is a ploy to create doves.

Much of what we are hearing from the left on immigration is bunk. There are few, if any, countries in modern history who have been indifferent to the security of their borders and who is and is not permitted to live within them. Immigration reform may be in order, but trying to find some way to enforce the laws we have is nothing like genocide, slavery or any other inapposite metaphor that proponents of illegal immigration might choose.