Highjacked – Alien vs. Migrant vs. Noncitizen
When you hear the term highjacked, it’s common for people to immediately think of a terrorist forcefully taking control of an aircraft. History would indicate that if we don’t control who and what boards an aircraft it will potentially be highjacked and taken off course, or worse. I assert that when people change the definition of words to fit their agenda, any conversation, then any associated critical thinking can easily be highjacked. Words, and their appropriate definitions do matter!
In my humble opinion, the public conversation about immigration has been highjacked by political extremes of both parties. From my perspective, with nearly three decades in the front row seats, those on one side of the “discussion” started redefining words several years ago and began a slow deliberate process of highjacking any meaningful conversation about immigration. In what I believe to be a huge miscalculation, that side of the discussion decided to lump all immigration into one generic group calling them immigrants, or migrants. They subtly asserted that there is no distinction between legal and illegal immigration. Any use of defining terms such as “illegal” were deemed racist and a sign of bigotry. The term “alien” was deemed to be even worse. Now some States and local governments are going so far as to outlaw the use of these words. Ignore the fact that by both legal and common definitions, and enacted Federal law, the term “alien” simply means someone that is in a country they are not a citizen of. An alien can be in the U.S. legally or illegally. When someone migrates to the US legally but has not yet finished the process to become a naturalized citizen the identification card they must carry by law identifies them as a “Resident Alien”. That is not an insult or a slur. It is simply a legal immigration status which allows someone who is not a citizen of the U.S. to move around the country freely, and in many cases hold a job.
As one side of the spectrum moved to aggressively shut down any conversation that separated legal and illegal immigration, more and more people on the other side of the discussion began to resent all immigrants regardless of legal status. The opposite side of the discussion began to vilify all immigrants using the same generic groupings of migrants, immigrants, or aliens without regard to legal status. According to the extremists on this side of the discussion, any alien or immigrant is likely a terrorist, rapist, murder, drug courier or other type of criminal.
Viola, [wha la] the entire conversation is highjacked and nearly all intelligent dialogue grinds to a halt. If you support any process that simply ensures that we know who and what enters our homeland, you are now a racist, a bigot. If you support allowing any new immigrants to enter and stay in the country, you are now an open border global socialist. And the voices of the masses in the middle are drowned out by the extremely loud battle cries on both ends of the spectrum.
The conversation, and the security of this great Nation has effectively been highjacked. Unlike an aircraft that is highjacked, there is no SWAT team or Federal Air Marshal that can run to the rescue and fix this. It is up to us. If we don’t take the conversation(s) back from the highjackers, our kids will pay the price.