The establishment media have dramatically moved away from using precise language in reporting of immigration stories.
In the latest effort to distract the reading public from understanding unsustainable immigration’s broad consequences, The Associated Press recently announced that journalists should “avoid” using “chain migration” unless it’s a direct quote, and then the term should be explained. The reasons AP cited for banning “chain migration” is that it’s “applied by immigration hardliners” in reference to what the federal government calls family reunification.
Chain migration has been part of the immigration lexicon for decades. Even in Congress, those who push for open borders, amnesty and limited internal enforcement have often included the words “chain migration” in their dialogues.
In 2010, when he was promoting one of the various DREAM Act versions, Sen. Dick Durbin, R-Ill., pointed out that one of the advantages of his legislation was that it would not allow “chain migration.”
In today’s poisoned atmosphere, mainstream, pro-immigration reporters are unlikely to correctly explain how family reunification relates to population growth. Family reunification, a large population growth driver, means that millions of extended family members — including cousins, aunts, uncles and in-laws — will come to the United States regardless of their educations, skills or backgrounds.
Homeland Security Department data show that between 2005 and 2016 about 9.3 million foreign nationals came to the United States as chain migrants. During that same time period, more than 13 million lifetime work-authorized foreign nationals entered the United States through legal immigration processes.
Seven out of 10 new arrivals come to America as part of the chain. Then, on average, each immigrant present sponsors 3.45 additional family members for green cards.
AP content, according to its website, reaches more than half of the world’s population. When the powerful AP bans the words “illegal immigrant,” purposely conflates lawful immigrants with illegal immigrants and then blocks the use of “chain migration,” it’s guilty of encouraging inaccurate journalism in an effort to influence readers.
Illegal alien, the correct term, appears repeatedly throughout the U.S. Code, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, and the Immigration and Nationality Act, but has mostly vanished from mainstream media copy.
The Media Research Center found that the public favors giving legal status to “undocumented” workers over “illegal immigrants.” Amnesty is the end result that the AP favors.
Journalists who want to keep their jobs should heed the AP mandate. An Israeli Rutgers University student was fired from The Daily Targum, the campus newspaper, when he objected to editorial changes that substituted “undocumented” for “illegal” in reference to immigrants who entered unlawfully. His editors pointed to the AP Stylebook to defend their decision.
And an Internet subscription-only legal newsletter stopped posting the opinions of retired immigration judges when they refused to comply with its editorial board’s demand that they replace “illegal alien” with “undocumented.”
In their opinion column, the judges pointed to the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ pronouncement in the United States v. Texas case that challenged President Barack Obama’s executive order on deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA). The court compared the term “undocumented immigrant” to “near-gobbledygook.”
The judges also wrote that they found the newsletter censorship “oppressive, derogatory and inflammatory to the American ideals of freedom of thought, (and) expression …” They referenced William Lutz, author of The New Doublespeak, who wrote that doublespeak is language “which makes the bad seem good, the negative seem positive, the unpleasant seem unattractive, or at least tolerable.”
The true hardliners in the immigration imbroglio are the media that stifle debate with politically correct language, and brazenly reject the standards of journalism. The ethics code of the Society of Professional Journalists requires that advocacy be identified, and that the open and civil exchange of views should be supported, even if reporters find those views “repugnant.”
In today’s media, immigration stories are thinly disguised editorials; proponents of common-sense immigration are dismissed. Words matter. Reporters are professionally obligated to use correct language.
— Joe Guzzardi is an analyst and researcher with Progressives for Immigration Reform who now lives in Pittsburgh. He can be reached at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org, or follow him on Twitter: @joeguzzardi19. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.