re: "Congress won’t pass the DREAM Act?"

Jeff G. at Protein Wisdom ("because not just anybody can summarize the news.") took on the pet peeve of a lot of people: denying the illegality of illegal aliens.

Money quote(s):

"“many illegal immigrants who don’t have criminal records” is itself a surreal formulation, given that “illegal” presupposes breaking the law — criminality — and that, for them to be identified as “illegal” for the purposes of granting them backdoor amnesty, they are therefore recorded as having been law breakers.

Language matters. It does. And because it does, we know that “illegal immigrants” are by their very nature criminals, though one’s idea of the degree of that criminality is fluid." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Most of us who aren't lawyers get our notions of crime and law from dimly remembered civics classes (called "social studies" when CAA was in grade school) and from watching Law & Order reruns.

So there's some understanding that there are more than one kind of law and more than one kind of criminal. That there is criminal law, civil law, felony crimes, and misdemeanor crimes. So it's sometimes hard for to wrap ones brain around the notion of someone who breaks the law not being a criminal.

8/19