The following article by David Nakamura was posted on the Washington Post website January 21, 2018:
Lars Larson, a conservative radio host in Portland, Ore., who supports President Trump, uses the phrase “illegal aliens” on his nationally syndicated talk show to describe immigrants living in the country unlawfully.
“I think it’s a way to define a problem,” Larson said. “We’re a nation of laws.”
Cecilia Muñoz, a longtime immigrant rights advocate who served as President Barack Obama’s domestic policy adviser, calls those words “pejorative” and prefers alternatives such as “undocumented immigrants.”
“Aliens, in the public mind, are not a good thing,” Muñoz said.
Their disagreement over how to describe an estimated population of 11 million people might seem like minor semantics in the tempestuous, decades-long debate over how to overhaul the nation’s immigration system. But people on both sides say the yawning gap in language has come to symbolize — and directly contribute to — the inability of Congress and the general public to forge consensus. An impasse on immigration was at the center of the budget fight that led to a shutdown of the federal government Saturday. Continue reading “‘Language as a weapon’: In Trump era, immigration debate grows more heated over what words to use”