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Copyright 2006 The Miami
Herald
All Rights Reserved
The Miami Herald
May 24, 2006 Wednesday
SECTION: A; Pg. 27
No
human being is `illegal'
By Mirta
Ojito.
mao35@columbia.edu
Mirta
Ojito is the author of ''Finding Manana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus.''
I have been allotted 700 words to make a simple and direct point about the
use of the phrase ''illegal immigrant.'' Here it is then: ''Illegal immigrant''
is a term that no self-respecting journalist ought to ever use. Not because
it is politically incorrect, or inhumane -- though an argument can be made
for both -- but because it is imprecise.
It adds nothing to the political debate and, more important, it says nothing
about the person(s) being written about. Good journalists seek details and
work with facts. Mediocre journalists are content with labels and generalities.
At the top of the class
''Illegal immigrant'' does not tell the reader how how Rosanna, from the
Do-minican Republic, overstayed her tourist visa a decade ago and settled
in New York. Or how Angelita, from El Salvador, crossed three borders before
arriving, 10 years ago, shoeless and famished, in Texas. Or how Eduardo Suñol,
a native of Cuba, arrived at Miami International Airport without documents
6 ½ years ago, spent five days detained in Krome and last week graduated
at the top of his class of nearly 300 students from Columbia University's
Graduate School of Jour-nalism.
I am aware that in journalism words count, especially at a time when readers
are said to be suffering from diminishing attention spans and newspapers
have ever shrinking news holes. I'm not proposing that reporters write the
biography of every immigrant they quote in a story or refer to in passing.
What I'm proposing is that reporters refrain from qualifying human beings
according to their immigration status.
Instead, let's describe what they did and, if we must, label the act, but
not the person, as illegal. Thus, we'd have Rosanna, who stayed in the country
ille-gally after her tourist visa expired; Angelita, who crossed the border
ille-gally; and Eduardo, who sneaked into the country without documents.
All of them committed illegal acts. None of them are illegal beings.
To do otherwise, to lump everyone's life and complex circumstances into a
ge-neric label is to do a disservice to the craft.
Pervasive phrase
To write ''illegal immigrant'' is, in fact, akin to writing words or phrases
such as ''countless,'' ''a few years ago'' and ''probably not uncommon.''
I don't allow my students to turn in copy with such generalities. Why then
do re-porters, editors and headline writers across the nation see nothing
wrong with a label such as ''illegal immigrant''? This newspaper, for example,
permitted re-porters and columnists to use it 201 times this year. All the
usages couldn't have been critical, or you wouldn't be reading this column
today.
I suspect that the phrase is so pervasive because many reporters and editors
intuitively understand that the majority of their readers do not find it
ques-tionable and may even prefer it. In the current heated and polarizing
immigra-tion debate, it is the presence of the immigrant itself, his or her
very exis-tence in the United States, that is being objected to by those
who would have the borders sealed off. The immigrant's status is of less
consequence to the anti-immigrant crowd than the actual human being who speaks
only Spanish and tends to have caramel-colored skin.
The war -- and it is a war -- against immigrants is being waged because an
ever-growing number of Americans are questioning and redefining who gets
to be an American. Language is one way to make that distinction clear.
Choose words carefully
Of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country, about
six million are of Mexican origin. The others come from Asia, Europe, Africa,
Canada and other countries in the Americas. And yet, I have never seen a
French waiter described as an illegal immigrant by anyone other than, perhaps,
the au-thorities.
The debate, as it is framed now, has become a strictly anti-Hispanic immigra-tion
battle cry. And nothing rallies this nation quicker and more efficiently
than the presence of an alien. Particularly one who is also considered ``illegal.''
Reporters must not allow their craft to be used by those who want to draw
a distinction between human beings according to their immigration status.
Because in journalism words not only count but they also matter, it's imperative
that we get them right.
Mirta Ojito, the author of Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban
Exodus,teaches a course on immigration reporting at the Graduate School of
Journalism at
Columbia University.
