Conflating Immigrants with Illegal Immigrants

You'd think that by now most people would be quick to recognize that immigrants and illegal immigrants are very different, but you'd be wrong. Writes Ruben Navarrette Jr.:

Finally, I said, there is an unfortunate double standard in how Americans feel about foreign flags and those who wave them. A couple of years ago, Jewish Americans marched on Washington to declare support for Israel. Guess what flag many of them waved? And no one said a critical word. This wasn’t a cultural event like St. Patrick’s Day. This was a political gesture, like, say, a march for immigrants’ rights. Yet, some will insist, those who marched on Washington waving the Israeli flag were probably U.S. citizens and those who marched last week on May Day were, in all likelihood, immigrants. And that makes a difference. But wait. We know from media reports that many of the pro-immigrant marchers were U.S. citizens, including the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

As Bill Quick responds at the first link:

I don’t think most Americans have any real problem with other Americans who wave the banners of their former countries in celebrations here. Yet it is certainly understandable that Americans might resent the brazen sense of unearned entitlement demonstrated by those who live here in a state of illegality and who thrust the flags of their current nation (the only one in which they hold legal residency or citizenship) while demanding “rights” that are beyond their legal status in the first place.

I agree with everything Mr. Navarrette says about those immigrants who have followed the rules, waited their turn, and live in the United States in full compliance with our laws. But when he conflates legal immigrants with illegals under the general rubric of “immigrants,” he practices a pernicious form of dishonesty that poisons all his arguments and, indeed, the discussion itself. And, strangely enough, his position even shows great respect to those who legally emigrated into the country from Mexico, often waiting for years while patiently working their way through the endless convolutions of U.S. immigration procedures. To make the claim that such folks are no different — that they are all part of some vast, amorphous group of “immigrants” that includes all those who didn’t endure the same hardships — is to render their patience, their respect for the law, and the goals they have worked so hard to reach a sad joke. More fools them, for obeying the law.

The purposeful conflation of legal immigrants with illegal immigrants is intended to confuse and prevent the important debate on immigration. Any writer who refuses to recognize the difference between the two groups has nothing meaningful to contribute to the discussion.