Is ‘Illegal Immigrant’ the Right Description?

NEW YORK TIMES (Blog)

By Margaret Sullivan

September 24, 2012

http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/is-illegal-immigrant-the-right-description/

Jose Antonio Vargas is a man on a mission. The journalist turned immigration activist wants news organizations to stop using the term “illegal immigrants,” which he finds disparaging and inaccurate. He’s particularly focusing on The Times and The Associated Press to change their policies.

Mr. Vargas has approached me about it by e-mail, and I’ve said I would be happy to hear him out. I should note that, as public editor, I don’t make Times policy on such things. However, I could, at some point, take a stand.

At this point, I don’t know enough.

I do know what Mr. Vargas — who revealed that he is an ‘undocumented immigrant’ in a Times Magazine piece last year — told the Online News Assocation in a speech there last Friday.

And I talked about it Monday morning with Philip B. Corbett, the associate managing editor for standards at The Times. “We do think about this, and we talk about it all the time,” he said.

Asked about the matter by Poynter.org’s Mallary Tenore on Monday, he responded as follows:

• Obviously we know this is a sensitive area, one that we continue to struggle with. As my colleague Julia Preston, who covers immigration, has suggested, we’re trying hard to be neutral on an issue where there isn’t much neutral ground.
  
  
• For one thing, we don’t reduce our coverage of this complicated issue to a single label. Julia and other Times reporters try to be detailed, descriptive and as accurate as possible in writing about immigrants in a whole range of different situations.
  
  
• But in referring in general terms to the issue of people living in the United States without legal papers, we do think the phrases “illegal immigrants” and “illegal immigration” are accurate, factual and as neutral as we can manage under the circumstances. It is, in fact, illegal to enter, live or work in this country without valid documents. Some people worry that we are labeling immigrants as “criminals” — but we’re not. “Illegal” is not a synonym for “criminal.” (One can even park “illegally,” though it’s not a criminal offense.)
  
  
• Proposed alternatives like “undocumented” seem really to be euphemisms — as though this were just a bureaucratic mix-up that can easily be remedied. Often those phrases seem deliberately chosen to try to soften or minimize the significance of the lack of legal status. We avoid those euphemisms just as we avoid phrases that tend to cast a more pejorative light on immigrants. For example, we steer clear of the shorthand “illegals” and also the word “aliens,” both of which we think have needlessly negative connotations.

So, in keeping with my promise to make this blog a continuing conversation about journalism and journalistic practices, I’ll put the question out there for discussion.

In the meantime, I also hope to talk with Julia Preston. Here are her comments last week in an ABC/Univision story.

What do you think? You can respond in comments to this blog, e-mail me at public@nytimes.com or reply on Twitter, where my handle is @sulliview.

I’ll aggregate the discussion and comment more substantively soon.