Drop the I Word!

The word “illegal” when being applied to someone living within our borders without being inspected is disrespectful and extremely racially biased. When someone uses the term “illegal alien”  or “Illegal immigrant” they are really making a derogatory reference to someone who is from another country (usually referring to Mexicans) and living here without being inspected by an immigration officer.

Illegal is an action and not a noun. A person can do something illegal, but a person can never be illegal.

The correct term is “Entering Without Inspection” and can be used to describe any person from any country who entered our borders without proper papers and registration. There are a great many people who have done this and Millions of them are not Latino, and the ones that are, almost half of them are not even from Mexico, so grouping everyone into a “Mexican” label and creating a derogatory classification for them is disrespectful, racial, immoral, and just plain incorrect.

Please take a stand and correct everyone you hear, and write to everyone you read who writes this terrible phrase when referring to a living, breathing human being. We all deserve more respect than this.

Join my friends over at ColorLines and take the pledge to Drop the I word.

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