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Comment by TheOtherHobbes | Hacker News Reader

It's clearly not true that everyone is properly documented.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/lawyers-advocates-say-48...

This article says that the communities are having a hard time figuring out which 48 people were arrested, which is a very different problem than having a specific person you're looking for and not knowing where they went to.

Again: still bad, still inexcusable, but not the same thing as what would have to be happening here.

That someone is not documented doesn’t mean you get to treat everyone that way. That someone is not documented doesn’t mean they have no rights for that matter.

I think in this case they are referring to the documentation of what happened to them, not their immigration status

The label “undocumented” is utterly dishonest. “Undocumented” implies that something has been permitted, but not documented. Like agreeing to let a friend live in your basement apartment without drawing up a lease.

Illegal immigrants aren’t “undocumented.” They are present in America without the consent of the American people, as expressed in immigration law.

The lack of enforcement of the law is also a kind of consent. The notion that a law as written alone represents 'people's consent' is a total non-starter in any kind of realistic system of governance, to build a claim of 'dishonesty' on top of that seems extra silly. You don't like the term, fine, you don't like the term. But let's not pretend that dislike is some kind of inevitable consequence compelled by Pure Logiks or whatever.

I don’t like it because it’s dishonest. The term “undocumented” implies that something has been agreed to or sanctioned, just not written down. But nobody agreed to allow illegal immigrants to come and stay here.

As you acknowledge, the term embeds within it the premise that “the lack of enforcement of the law is also a kind of consent.” That is, illegal immigrants have America’s consent to be present in the country, because the government doesn’t try to hard to deport them. You can make that argument, but almost nobody would agree with your premise. So the term is smuggling an implicit premise that almost nobody would agree with if the premise were stated clearly (as you have done here).

The phrase "undocumented" is bureaucratic speak for "you can't prove it."

"The allegations are undocumented."

In the context of immigration, one could say "she claims to face persecution in her country of origin, but this is undocumented."

That doesn't really apply to "undocumented immigrants," because it's usually not in doubt someone is an immigrant.

If their place of birth is unknown, and might be in the United States, you could use the phrase "undocumented immigrant."

I agree it's a propaganda phrase, and does not conform to clear English usage.

But "undocumented" does not mean something is sanctioned, it means it must be proven and has not been proven.

Does the court say that someone driving without a license is an 'illegal driver'? Nope, they say they are 'operating without a license' or 'driving illegally'. And guess what, that isn't because the courts are being dishonest.

> But nobody agreed to allow illegal immigrants to come and stay here.

In 90% of cases somebody did. Somebody at the border talked to them. Somebody checked their passport or their documentation (at the border). So many "undocumented immigrants" are people who overstayed their visas, like Elon did.

They literally were documented but then they didn't keep up with the paperwork and thus became undocumented.

"Doccumented" status *is* literally just a case of keeping up with the paperwork.

Some people do sneak in but the *vast majority* come through legal ports of entry

Plenty of people agreed, especially the many, many businesses that happily employ them. Come back with this "consent of the people" stuff when we have mandatory E-Verify.

Does the law call someone who drives without a license an illegal driver or an unlicensed driver? Someone who practices medicine an illegal doctor or refer to them as unlicensed? Someone operating without a permit is not an illegal worker but an operator without a license.

You could certainly say they were driving, practicing medicine, or operating machinery illegally, or indeed working illegally if they don't provide valid documents.

Did you read my comment? They were driving illegally, not an illegal driver. Practicing medicine illegally, not an illegal doctor. Working illegally, not an illegal worker. See how the language of it works? They are in the US illegally, they are not an illegal person.

I don’t think these tendentious language games are winning as much support for your position as you think. Do you object to calling people felons, instead of saying they are people convicted of a felony? I know the idea is that by not calling someone a felon, you imply that some negative characteristic doesn’t define a person. But it’s been extended from diseases and mental illnesses, where the logic does make some sense, to legal categories, where I don’t think people ever had an issue keeping the two things apart. Also, progressives are hypocrites in that they are more than willing to call people racists instead of saying they’re merely people expressing racist thoughts or engaging in racist behaviors.

> Also, progressives are hypocrites in that they are more than willing to call people racists instead of saying they’re merely people expressing racist thoughts or engaging in racist behaviors.

FWIW that pattern of behavior has little to do with "being a progressive" and instead reflects the cultural norm. I'd even go so far as to posit that "progressives" are more likely to point out that, no, there's really not "a racist" but a person can hold a lot of extremely racist beliefs - the same way btw as there's really not "a progressive" but a person can hold a lot of progressive beliefs. A system can be "racist" in that it can be built on and to uphold racist attitudes or beliefs but a person can't be "racist" because racism isn't an intrinsic and immutable characteristic (neither is "progressive", "Catholic", "criminal" or "Republican", to name a few examples explicitly).

But precisely because you can't actually be "a progressive" but merely hold some progressive beliefs and opinions a lot of "progressives" uphold the same harmfully essentialist views as "non-progressives" who balk at being called out for racist opinions, views or actions by insisting "I'm not racist" regardless of whether the accusation is "you're a racist" or "you said/did something racist".

"Felon" is an obviously silly example as it's just a more specific form of "convict", i.e. someone convicted of a felony crime. It's often used in an essentialist way (but of course selectively so) but the more obvious example would be "criminal" because it is often used in a way that suggests an intrinsic essence of "criminality" even in the absence of sufficient evidence to make a legal case that would result in a conviction - or even the presence of an arguable crime at all. "Criminal" is thus distinct from "convict" in that a conviction is neither necessary nor sufficient for that label to be applied.

I don't give a crap about support of positions. A person can't be 'illegal'. They can be violating the law, but they are not illegal, unless we go back to Japanese internment camp style thinking, where the person themselves is the thing requiring incarceration.

Back when I was a libertarian they were pretty big on this argument, not progressives, as libertarians were the open borders people and progressives were off on some other cause.

The bigger comment is that these people are not documented or undocumented. To be either would require due process where such documents could be produced.

Documentation is hard to do accurately when someone illegally immigrates with no documents.

The Department of Homeland Security is not an undocumented immigrant, nor is the court system. They are required to document what they do.

And many of the disappeared people were here either with valid asylum claims or temporary protected status and were following the laws to get their day in court -- at which time it would have been completely legal and appropriate to deport them if their claims were denied. Instead, we have secret police grabbing them off the street, immediately transferring them out of the jurisdiction they were picked up in and flying them out of the country to a notoriously violent prison in an unrelated country less than 48 hours after they were picked up... it's an absolute travesty and anyone who defends it should be deeply ashamed.

Some people had 100% valid visas that were revoked upon attempting to enter, at the (arbitrary) discretion of an immigration officer for years old non-criminal issues that had been resolved.

They were then detained for days rather then be allowed to exit the country.

How does homeland security know who they arrested if the individual has no documents?

Assuming they're not in a biometric database and from a non cooperative country like Venezuela.

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