The “I” Word

México del Norte
Jorge Mújica Murias
mexicodelnorte@yahoo.com.mx

Lost among the news this month, mostly occupied by the Occupy Wall Street and many-other-places-in-the-world movement, there’s a tiny note about some colleagues, the Association of Professional Journalists.

At their last meeting, early this month, upon a proposal presented by Rebeca Aguilar, also member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, to which I don’t belong just because I have not paid my dues, the Society decided to drop the words “illegal alien”.

In a very formal resolution, the Society states that according their Ethics Code, “urges all journalists to be ‘honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information’”; that “mainstream news reports are increasingly using the politically charged phrase ‘illegal immigrant’ and the more offensive and bureaucratic ‘illegal alien’”; that a fundamental principle embedded in our U.S. Constitution is that everyone (including non-citizens) is considered innocent of any crime until proven guilty in a court of law”; that “only the court system, not reporters and editors, can decide when a person has committed an illegal act and”; that it is “concerned with the increasing use of pejorative and potentially inaccurate terms to describe the estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the United States”, and resolves that “the Society of Professional Journalists convention of delegates: urges journalists and style guide editors to stop the use of illegal alien and encourage continuous discussion and re-evaluation of the use of illegal immigrant in news stories.”

I don’t know you, but to me this looks like an impressive resolution. It gives us back (at least), the benefit of the doubt, and returns to us our lost human character, lost since the first time we sere dubbed as “aliens”, just like Martians and less than humans.


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Such news made me think that we should start the same campaign at home, and I remembered some Spanish language news I had read about immigration. I got a few examples in a few seconds.

Mexican newspaper El Universal: “Salma Hayek admits she was an Illegal Alien”. Salma herself stated that “I was an illegal alien. It was for a short period, but I was”.

Then, Telemundo 52, Los Angeles: “The Arizona law… criminalizes to be al illegal alien”. Their rival Univisión follows path. Commenting on nefarious Arizona’s SB 1070, says that “It give Police departments… the authority to question the status of a person it there is a ‘reasonable suspicion’ that it may be an illegal alien”.

Another big one, Yahoo News in Spanish: “Alaska: Police Officer is an Illegal Alien”. Same in MSN Latino News: “Tribunal Blocks Expulsion of Minor, Daughter of an Illegal Alien”.

Terra, Internet news agency, formerly part of Spain’s phone monopoly company “A US Judge Says an Illegal Alien Can Marry”. Another telephone-news agency, but Mexican, Unonoticias Telcel: “Two youth declared guilty in a US Court for killing an illegal alien”. Even the radio station of the Sandinista Front in Nicaragua, La Primerísima: “Elvira Arellano, an illegal immigrant, symbol of Mexicans in the US”.

Not to be missed is the international news agency Reuters: “The law states that the Police should establish is a person is illegally in the country and question it if it suspects it is an illegal alien”. Also EFE, Spain’s News Agency: “The Human Face of Illegal Immigration. Presentation of a book analyzing the situation of immigrants after a 10-year research”. Curiously, Spanish newspaper La Opinión in Los Ángeles published this note as written by EFE.

But the worse of the worse, if that is possible, are some other expressions in Spanish language publications. El Mañana newspaper, in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas: “Body of aspiring illegal alien recovered”; El Zócalo newspaper, Saltillo: “It said the person may be an aspiring illegal because of the clothes it was wearing”. Our collegue Miguel Rojas Salazar, in Expresión Libre: “Someone who aspires to become an illegal may not only face the terrible nightmare before reaching the American dream…”

And, finally, WordPress in Reporte Frontera: “They were brought in front of the Judge… and sent to the federal authorities, completing the legal process of the aspiring illegal”.

I say these are the worst because they state someone can “aspire to become an illegal”. Those who emigrate aspire to have a better life, a better future, a better job, to have more money to support their family. The aspire to become anything but “illegal”.

Colleagues, please, no more “illegal”!