A Jesuit university in Wisconsin has published a language guide for terminology related to “undocumented students” on their official school website.
According to their website, Marquette University’s guide to “Undocumented Student Terminology” is an effort to provide “guidance for how campus leaders, faculty, staff, and students can show their support through compassionate and inclusive language.”
Included among the language guidelines, students are requested to completely avoid usage of the term “illegal” when referring to undocumented immigrants. According to the school’s website, it is wrong to call them illegal immigrants because all humans are innocent until convicted in court.
“These individuals are not illegal,” the site reads. “The term ‘illegal immigrant’ eschews one of our most fundamental and cherished legal principles of innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.”
The argument is baseless, however, because by being here without proper documentation or permission, these individuals are breaking the law. While they are not “criminal aliens” unless they have been convicted of a crime in a court of law, simply remaining in the country illegally does not exempt one from a responsibility to follow the law.
The guidelines go on to instruct students to “drop the i-word,” while directing students via link to the website for Race Forward, an organization dedicated to pressuring media outlets to, among other things, “reject efforts to criminalize immigrants (and) hold our media accountable for dropping the i-word.”
In addition to attempting to police student speech when it comes to illegal immigrants, Marquette administrators also utilize the website as an effort to openly lobby for the DREAM Act, which would grant a six-year path to permanent legal residency for roughly 2 million illegal immigrants.
While many college administrators have embraced illegal immigration as a way to increase student enrollment, numerous reports have indicated that the DREAM Act merely subsidizes education for illegal immigrants, encourages further unlawful immigration, and will inevitably end up taking jobs from American workers.
