The New York Times recently published a profile of Univision anchor Jorge Ramos that highlights the Republican quandary about illegal immigration. The author quotes Ramos telling Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus that the party is so fixated on deportation that "the message is anti-immigrant."
Deportations, of course, mainly target illegal immigrants (plus legal immigrants who commit serious crimes). This is a distinction that Ramos chooses not to make. This descriptive failure has strategic consequences that Ramos appreciates. It invokes on behalf of illegal immigrants the emotional, mythical, and personal connotations of our immigrant backgrounds.
This linguistic reality shows why many of those who want immigration laws that both set limits and enforce them prefer to speak of illegal aliens. The term, combining an adjective that is straightforward with a noun that suffers from its use to describe space creatures, is often seen as ungracious, especially by those who don't appreciate its precision.
As a report from the Congressional Research Service noted, "Immigrants are persons admitted as legal permanent residents (LPRs) of the United States." (See p. 4.) In contrast, someone whose admission is temporary is granted a "non-immigrant" visa. That is why the term illegal immigrant is, legally speaking, an oxymoron.
Jorge Ramos freely admits to practicing journalism "with a point of view", a fuzzy term that means "with a bias". Ramos's bias is that anyone who gets across the border should be allowed to stay. His fixation is the plight of people who came to the United States illegally or violated the terms of their visas and then either established families or joined families already established here. He rails against the deportation of all who have not complicated their status by becoming felons.
The Times story goes on to quote Ramos as observing that "immigration is personal" to Latinos. "Immigration is the issue that tells us who is with us and who is against us; there's no question about it."
As someone who lived in Arizona for many years, I agree. But for millions of Latinos, what is most personal is not the fact that most Americans want to stop illegal immigrants. It is that some Americans — particularly some Republicans — seem to pursue that policy with a personalized animosity and antagonism typified by the rhetoric of Iowa Rep. Steve King and Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Many Latinos understand that immigration must be restricted. "Todo tiene un limite," they say — everything has a limit. They know — personally — that unchecked flows across the border cause enormous disruptions within their communities as the newcomers compete for jobs and status and services.
But Ramos, who solemnly declares his commitment to "give voice to the voiceless", has been strategically committed to ignoring the voices of those in his own community who want immigration enforcement for the greater good of their community and their country. Many of them would like to see what many of us on the restrictionist side of the immigration debate would also like to see — a compromise that provides legal status to many of those now here illegally while recognizing that everything has a limit and that limits must be enforced.
Todo tiene un limite — that is, if we do not want our country to continue to fracture along lines of ethnicity and class and politics. Ramos doesn't understand that. If Republicans do, they need to go about making the case intelligently, with respect for the fundamental human dignity of everyone. That includes those called illegal immigrants, a term that is itself a linguistic compromise.