{"id":651152,"date":"2013-04-08T16:46:41","date_gmt":"2013-04-08T20:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ted.com\/?p=74499"},"modified":"2013-04-08T16:55:50","modified_gmt":"2013-04-08T20:55:50","slug":"rethinking-the-term-illegal-immigrant-because-people-cant-be-illegal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/651152","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking the term &lsquo;illegal&rsquo; immigrant: Because people can&rsquo;t be illegal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/tedxtalks.ted.com\/video\/Jose-Vargas-at-TEDxMidAtlantic\/player?layout=&amp;read_more=1\" height=\"330\" width=\"586\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>Last week, the Associated Press announced its decision to remove the term \u201cillegal immigrant\u201d from the AP Stylebook. <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.ap.org\/2013\/04\/02\/illegal-immigrant-no-more\/\">In a blog post by Director of Media Relations Paul Colford<\/a>, AP\u2019s executive editor Kathleen Carroll revealed the news: \u201cThe Stylebook no longer sanctions the term \u2018illegal immigrant\u2019 or the use of \u2018illegal\u2019 to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that \u2018illegal\u2019 should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>TEDx speaker and former <em>Washington Post<\/em> reporter Jose Antonio Vargas has been one of the outspoken critics of this term. At age 16, he found out he\u2019d been brought to the United States illegally as a child. In a frank and moving talk given at <a href=\"http:\/\/tedxmidatlantic.com\/\">TEDxMidAtlantic<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/tedxtalks.ted.com\/video\/Jose-Vargas-at-TEDxMidAtlantic;search%3Atag%3A%22ep121211-1%22\">\u201cI am an illegal immigrant,\u201d<\/a> Vargas reveals what it\u2019s like to \u201ccome out\u201d as a person living in the United States without documentation, and explains his objections to using the word \u201cillegal\u201d to describe people.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cIt\u2019s actually legally inaccurate to refer somebody as an illegal, because to be in this country without papers is a civil offense, not a criminal one,\u201d he says. \u201cAs I stand here right now, there are tens of thousands of students across America who are here without papers, and I would hate to think that they\u2019re sitting in their classrooms listening to us talk about them and internalizing the word \u2018illegal.\u2019 \u2026 It\u2019s incredibly dehumanizing and pejorative and [so many connotations] come with it \u2014 negative, all of them. That we\u2019re criminals. That we\u2019re not supposed to be within even the block that you live in or the school that you go to. Actions are illegal \u2014 never people. Something is terribly wrong when we refer to people as \u2018illegal.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Watch Vargas\u2019 talk, above.<\/p>\n<p>  <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/gocomments\/tedconfblog.wordpress.com\/74499\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/comments\/tedconfblog.wordpress.com\/74499\/\" \/><\/a> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/stats.wordpress.com\/b.gif?host=blog.ted.com&#038;blog=14795620&#038;%23038;post=74499&#038;%23038;subd=tedconfblog&#038;%23038;ref=&#038;%23038;feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/TEDBlog\/~4\/enihnVmo28s\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, the Associated Press announced its decision to remove the term \u201cillegal immigrant\u201d from the AP Stylebook. In a blog post by Director of Media Relations Paul Colford, AP\u2019s executive editor Kathleen Carroll revealed the news: \u201cThe Stylebook no longer sanctions the term \u2018illegal immigrant\u2019 or the use of \u2018illegal\u2019 to describe a person. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7550,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-651152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7550"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}