Would a truly reputable national newspaper use the N-word to describe African-Americans or refer to the LGBT community as ‘fags’ and excuse it is just “company policy?”

I doubted it. But the USA Today has done something similar.

The USA Today article “Groups try to delay deportations of illegal students” gets it wrong once again by calling immigrant students in the United States “illegal.”

BEWARE: USA Today reporter, Emily Bazar thinks it is alright to call us “illegal immigrants” because NumbersUSA has no problem with the phrase. Here is the email to prove this.

But wait, I get the “illegal immigrant” because that slur is familiar. However, WHAT is an “illegal student?”

Emily Bazar (ebazar@usatoday.com), specifically, has also placed one of our own students into an uncomfortable position. For this particular article, Ms. Bazar spoke to our Communications Director and when he told her that she could not use his last name, Bazar retaliated by saying that USA Today had “national standards” and policies to be adhered to. I wonder if these standards come straight from the hate-organization Numbers USA, funded by the known racist John Tanton or FAIR, who is quoted in the article saying the same things that have been debunked here.

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More specifically, I am not even talking about Bazar’s lack of journalistic ethics or the term “illegal immigrant” but “illegal students.” What is “illegal” exactly about being a student in this case? Is a drunk 19 year old college student an “illegal student” as well? Is it supposed to describe anyone who has ever done something illegal and also gone to school?

The basic legal premise of “no human being is illegal” is that just like someone cannot be called a criminal before due process of law, someone cannot be called ‘illegal’ without the same procedure. As an example, so many gay bi-national couples live in the shadows of society and are called ‘illegal’ due to their status. But has our judicial system ruled that denying LGBT couples immigration benefits is legal and doesn’t violate equal protection of the law? No. Similarly, most undocumented immigrants haven’t had their day in court but yet they are called “illegal” which is incomprehensible given even murderers and rapists are labeled as “alleged” criminals before their trial. There is no such thing as an “illegal alien” or person — it is the ultimate euphemism.

DO NOT grant Emily Bazar or USA Today any interviews till they clean up this mess and apologize.

Here is what we want from USA Today:

1. Clarify what makes students “illegal”
2. Cease and desist on this inaccurate and hateful policy.
3. Publish an apology and retraction

The proper words are undocumented and unauthorized in reference to immigrants. Even the Supreme Court gets it nowadays due to the influence of Judge Sotomayor and calls us “undocumented immigrants.”

In the meantime, I am still clueless about what an “illegal student” is. Maybe I need to go back to school for this one.

Who is Blogging About This?

Yesterday, Vice President of the National Council of La Raza sent us an email blasting USA Today reporter Emily Bazar with this statement:

Any implication that we would agree to or condone the use of “illegal student” is just patently false. We never ever use the word illegal when referring to a human being and never would. It is offensive, pejorative, inaccurate, and grammatically incorrect. “Illegal student” is not only wrong on substance and grammar grounds, it is just plain laziness on the part of people who purport to adhere to journalistic standards.

NCLR is getting set to make release a bigger statement by next week.

And Erin Rosa from Campus Progress declared that it was nearly impossible to be an “illegal student” in the United States, no matter what USA Today meant by the hateful terminology.

Imagine 2050, ran by Center for New Community, which has bravely fought back nativist terminology and exposed the anti-immigrant hate network, cross-posted a post of mine from The Sanctuary.

America’s Voice wrote in support of our organizing efforts, which was later cross-posted at the Reform Immigration for America campaign site, sending us a positive message that the national campaign for immigration reform stands with immigrant youth.

Latina Lista set the tone today with a great source post, later cross-posted at YLSE, in which she declares that using the term “illegal student” might just be more harmful than saying “illegal immigrants:”

Considering that these students are all young people who are having a hard enough time trying to make sense of a life that they didn’t choose for themselves, but are doing their best to make it work — and academically excel at it, shows a gross insensitivity on the part of mainstream media to their feelings and the delicate emotional situations these students find themselves in by labeling them with a term already identified as dehumanizing and insulting.

DREAM Act Texas explored illegal verbage, agreeing with us that USA Today used the term inaccurately since “in the United States there are no illegal students. According to a Supreme Court ruling, all students, regardless of residency status, can legally attend a school or university.”