Banishing Immigration Newspeak

This year, the tiresome "metrosexual" and the insufferable "bling bling" were deservedly condemned, as were several war-inspired entrants such as "embedded journalist" and "smoking gun." I was disappointed that none of my three choices for this annual dishonor made the cut, however. My nominees for banishment were: "Guest worker program," "Matching willing workers with willing employers," and the worst offender, "Work Americans won't do," as in "our economy needs illegal immigrants because they do work Americans won't do." Combined, these three Orwellian phrases are calculated to convey the impression that there are certain occupations so inherently dangerous or otherwise disagreeable that we lazy, self-indulgent, American crybabies must rely on hardy immigrant stock to roll up their sleeves and get the job done for us. Tell that to a Pennsylvania coal miner! Although it's true that less glamorous jobs are frequently filled by illegal aliens, the jobs themselves are not intrinsically unacceptable. Rather, the ready supply of illegal labor has resulted in many perfectly satisfactory jobs becoming unacceptable. In short, illegal aliens will work under unsanitary and unsafe conditions for minimum wage or even less, thereby lowering standards, and as long as employers can fill jobs by exploiting illegals, there will simply be no incentive to improve wages or working conditions. A recent piece by Nancy L. Othón and Mike Clary in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel illustrates this principle in action with the story of Gregorio Ruiz Aviles and Lauro Marquez Hernandez, two young Mexican illegal alien construction workers crushed to death in the collapse of a three-story building on which they were working. Five other men were injured in the accident. The Florida company which employed them was fined $2.4 million for having no workers' compensation insurance, but according to Othón and Clary, "five months after the deaths of Ruiz and Marquez, few public officials, employers, workers and immigrant advocates express much hope that change would come soon in an industry where undocumented workers willingly take any job they can get." Worse still, employers who play by the rules are easily underbid by their unscrupulous rivals, and the downward pressure on wages and safety intensifies. And this phenomenon is certain to worsen -- not lessen -- under any program which would legalize the process. Why? Because a "documented" worker is easier to deport, and will therefore be more likely to do "work Americans won't do" to avoid unemployment and ineligibility. A guest worker program will therefore simply institutionalize the current gray market for employees who will tolerate the intolerable. It's a tenuous doctrine, that American workers are so expensive that even American companies can't afford them, and the plan to extricate ourselves from this invented predicament by pinning our hopes on the newly legendary Mexican work ethic is flimsier still. And yet, there is some evidence that muddleheaded Americans are being persuaded by the hypnotic repetition of immigration Newspeak issuing from the White House, the Congress, and the major news media. A February 2004 Gallup Poll found that 46% of Americans support President Bush's plan to legalize Mexican nationals currently living here illegally, "as long as they hold jobs that no U.S. citizen wanted to do." George Orwell famously observed that political speech is "designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." What else can be said of a phrase such as "undocumented worker" which presupposes the subject is working, and transmutes the violation of our borders into an apparent paperwork mixup? Will we now refer to a bank robbery as an "unauthorized withdrawal?" And what shall we  call the children of undocumented workers? Undocumented students? Orwell forewarned us more than fifty years ago that sloppy  language begets foolish thinking -- and vice versa -- and it's as true today as ever. Purposely misleading expressions such as "work Americans won't do" are solid proof that big lies still fit neatly into short phrases. It's time we banished them.