Advocates of open borders and amnesty go to great lengths to deceive the public about their policy intentions. Instead of being upfront about these objectives and trying to win over public support, they engage in immigration newspeak that dispenses with precise, technical terminology and replaces it with inaccurate but sympathetic sounding words. The most common example is the persistent use of the term “undocumented” to describe aliens who have violated U.S. immigration law. Its use suggests that such aliens are merely missing the “right” documents, a simple paperwork mishap that can be easily remedied, rather than making an affirmative choice to break the law.
Facts can be difficult when they contradict the preferred narrative. You see, nearly every illegal alien in the country is very much "documented" and every single one of them has violated U.S. immigration law by either crossing the border unlawfully (entry without inspection) or entering the country lawfully and refusing to leave when required to do so (visa overstay). For illustrative purposes, a non-exhaustive list of documents that an illegal alien in the country likely possesses includes: (1) a birth certificate from their home country; (2) a passport, driver's license, or some other form of identity document from the home country; (3) a notice to appear (NTA) issued by U.S. immigration officials upon detaining the alien; (4) a visa permitting the alien into the U.S. under terms that he or she subsequently violated; (5) a fake U.S. passport, driver's license, or other identity document; (6) a stolen U.S. passport, driver's license, or other identity document; (7) an arrest record; or (8) a conviction issued by a U.S. judge. Even Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor uses the legally and factually accurate term "illegal alien" to describe someone with no legal basis to be in the country.
The Biden administration recently took immigration newspeak to a new level, ordering Department of Homeland Security employees to replace “illegal alien” with “undocumented noncitizen” or “undocumented individual”, among other terminology changes that replace legal, technical terms with imprecise words that require linguistic gymnastics to understand what exactly is being discussed. The predictable result of this edict was absurd and contradictory communications coming out of the federal government.
One of the clearest examples was a U.S. Customs and Border Protection press release amusingly titled “Laredo Sector Border Patrol Arrests Undocumented Individuals with Fake Documents”. The eight illegal aliens described in the press release were in possession of 11 fraudulent documents and if CBP used their legal identity documents to identify them, that would bring the total to at least 19 documents.
Another month, another linguistic embarrassment out of DHS. The source of the latest example is another CBP press release titled “St. Louis CBP Intercepts Fraudulent Documents for Undocumented Migrants”. The career staff of CBP should be applauded for this successful operation to combat identity fraud and make it harder for illegal aliens to work in the country unlawfully. But the Biden political team continues to do a disservice to its staff and the American people when it continues to take steps to protect illegal aliens rather than banging the drum loudly for the rule of law.