"illegal alien"

A bit of a break, but news continued. Thus, some backlog.

Marty Lederman was one of the leading bloggers at Balkinization, left to be in the Obama Administration and came back to provide longer posts without allowing comments. His posts on the Hobby Lobby case got to be too much.  He also, though well argued, comes off a bit too much of an apologist at times.  Still, ML shows his work and makes a good point in his (as usual, long) contribution to a discussion on immigration:

 But the deferred-action initiative is even less troubling in this regard than the marijuana example, because it is not a violation of federal law for an undocumented alien to remain in the United States.  Although 8 U.S.C. 1325(a) makes it a misdemeanor for an alien to enter the United States “at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers,” an undocumented alien has no legal obligation to leave the U.S. once she is present here.  (That’s why “illegal alien” is a misnomer.)

Justice Sotomayor has been vocal about this usage.  The rejoinder is that they did break the law. So what? Why are they in particular labeled "illegal" -- also as a stand alone label -- given the range of people who break laws?  Do we so bluntly label unlicensed electricians simply as "illegals" or something. We do not.  The term is selectively being applied to label a whole group of people as "illegal" in a way meant to be or by clear impact is shaming and somewhat dehumanizing.

The reminder here -- something even Rudy Giuliani once flagged -- that it is not "illegal" merely to reside undocumented is important. It is akin to calling someone an "illegal" for some past action they did. The term "undocumented" is particularly more reasonable here, since that specifically is what is the problem.  The person did commit a crime, but so did lots of people, down to those who use marijuana or back in the day, had sex outside of marriage.

An "alien who did something illegal" doesn't quite have the same bite, does it?  Not enough separation from the rest of us.