To: National Press Club
Being human is not "illegal"
We urge you to encourage all members who are reporters for news outlets, and not just AP reporters, to abandon the label "illegals" for immigrants whose status is in doubt. We hope reporters will instead employ verbiage and coverage that does not carelessly tag people with such a label who are innocent of violating any law but have found themselves in a circumstance unprovided for by our laws, which no person could have avoided.
Why is this important?
The Associated Press recently stopped labeling immigrants whose legal status is in doubt as "illegals," but individual news outlets still use the label. Labels expressing verdicts for groups of humans close our minds to further investigation of how we should understand those people. Verdicts before trials, in which evidence is presented and we hear from the accused, are a national embarrassment, especially in the case of immigration policy where there is so much ignorance and so little discussion.