An Ohio professor told one of his students that while they may use the term “illegal immigration,” he will not accept assignments with the term “illegal immigrant,” reported The Daily Caller.
If you take an Ohio State University sociology class, you might be lucky enough to get Victor Espinosa as your professor for “Sociology of Immigration.”
The professor asked his students to write an article about how immigration affects the United States and one of his students, Hannah Emerson, dared to use the term “illegal immigrant” in her submission.
Victor wrote a message to Emerson, saying “You should know that in this class, students will not be allowed to use the word ‘illegal’ to refer to an unauthorized immigrant. The use of the term ‘illegal’ by politicians and news media outlets…not only criminalizes undocumented workers, but it also dehumanizes, marginalizes, and racializes the people it seeks to describe.”
Professor Espinosa seems to be one of those guys who thinks life imitates art, not the other way around. Someone doesn’t become an illegal immigrant by our calling them that. We call them that because they’re illegally in the country. As for the racialize, marginalize, dehumanize drivel…yes, some races are more likely to illegally immigrate to America, yes, people who break the law deserve to be marginalized, but no, calling some “illegal” doesn’t make them any less human.
Victor told Hannah that “starting next week, any assignment or discussion post that uses the word ‘illegal immigrant’ to refer to an unauthorized immigrant will not be accepted.” But here’s the really funny part: the professor noted that while students couldn’t use “illegal immigrant,” they could say “illegal immigration.” I’m sure the reasoning behind that is something really compelling like “humans can’t be illegal!”
