Words are the Assault of thoughts!

As many of my former colleagues from the Bush Administration can attest, I am not a squeamish liberal, I don't appeal to soft sentimentalism, nor do I kneel at the pedestal of political correctness. I have always proudly espoused a deep conservative ideology, unabashedly embraced my protestant faith, and have counted giants like William F. Buckley, Judge Antonin Scalia and Ronald Reagan as a large influence in my political thought. I am also a free-trade, free market capitalists, pro-life, pro war on terror, pro-family values guy who stands by President Bush and his decision to rid Iraq of WMD's, terrororist and Sadam Hussein. I also happen to be a U.S. born Hispanic of Mexican decent.

Having said that, I would like to add my voice to a growing number of Americans who are taking a stand against the use of the word illegals to label individuals who have entered our borders illegaly. The use of the word as a noun by those involved in the immigration debate to label fellow human beings less fortunate than ourselves is an affront to our constitutional principles and our evolution as a modern and sophisticated society.

Simply stated, I loathe the word “illegals” because it perversely criminalizes the person, not the illicit action he or she committed. L.A. Chung from the Mercury News of San Jose, CA, put it best "Listen to me carefully here, and take note: People are not illegal. Actions may well be, but human beings are never illegal."

The appalling name is now regrettably ubiquitous - it's in newspapers and magazines, it's used by pundits on political talk shows, it's used in rants by hosts and callers on talk radio, it spews from the mouths of babes, and many Americans are using the word at the office water cooler.
Honestly, the ease and comfort by some of us to easily render another human being as less legitimate than ourselves has always amazed me. How quick we are to lower the rank of another fellow human being as less worthy.

My guess is that some of us use the term out of ignorance and intellectual laziness. We hear the label so often that it becomes part of our lexicon when the issue of immigration reform comes up in casual conversation or at the dinner table.

Or, some of us subconsciously opt for the moniker because it strips the humanity away from the individual, and renders them anonymous and alienable. It sets them apart as children of a lesser god and spares us from having to consider their dreams and aspirations as equal to ours. I further submit that some of us choose not to regard their talents and contributions as a product of their human virtue, but would rather believe these benefits are a mere product of “cheap labor” because it allows us to live at peace with ourselves. Maybe at our core we want to believe that the hopes for a better life held in a stubborn clutch by “those people” do not merit legitimacy because they are not really human beings after all, and that they should only exist to serve the privileged class (taken as a whole, this line of reasoning is, of course, racism in it's pure form; and it is sickening).

I would like to think the vast majority of us have used the word out of ignorance rather than the latter reason I just stated.

My Christian brothers and sisters like to say “hate the sin, not the sinner.” I guess it's that simple. As the Good Book tells us, none of us are perfect; all of us have sinned and come short of the Glory of God. If we have been redeemed in the sight of a merciful God, it is only because grace was gifted to us by His Son, not because we deserved forgiveness.

No matter where you stand on the issue of immigration reform, let us always keep in mind that the lives of fellow human beings hang in the balance.