On Wednesday, Oct. 10, I descended the stairwell at the back of the Campus Center, and came across a message written on the wall in permanent marker. The message read, “no one is illegal.” I have no doubt that the vandal is eager to see their work reported in the student newspaper, and knowing that they are likely reading this very article, I will write from this point onward in the form of an open letter:
Dear Vandal,
When I saw your message, I immediately assumed that it was written by an undocumented immigrant, and I doubt I am the only person to make that assumption. Therefore, if you did not intend to give the impression that undocumented immigrants are criminals, you should then have not written on the wall in permanent marker, as vandalism is a crime. Furthermore, in order to undo your vandalism, the school had to buy a new coat of paint and pay someone to apply it. You have cost this school money, and as a public university, this school’s money is the taxpayers’ money. What I’m saying is that, in the eyes of anyone who saw this message, you have validated the stereotype that undocumented immigrants like to commit crime and waste taxpayer money. Congratulations.
Of course, it’s possible that you knew your vandalism would reflect poorly on your community. You may have felt that the cost of validating stereotypes was outweighed by the reward of spreading your message. After all, who could read the sentence “no one is illegal” and not feel compelled to impeach Drumpf?
Unfortunately, the argument presented in your message seems to be predicated on a misunderstanding of the phrase “illegal immigrant.” This phrase does not refer to an immigrant whose very existence is a crime, but rather, an immigrant whose status as an immigrant is one of illegitimacy and therefore—as per the laws of this and every other first-world nation—criminality. I have never attended medical school, which means that if I were to perform open-heart surgery on you, I would be an illegal surgeon. If, as you say, “no one is illegal,” then you should have no problem with me cutting open your chest.
Granted, you’ve probably never heard the phrase “illegal surgeon” before, but that’s because people of that sort are far and few between, while according to a recent study done at Yale, the number of people who can be described as “illegal immigrants” is between 16.7 and 22.1 million (that is 5-7% of our population) (1). If there were that many unlicensed surgeons in America, you would hear the phrase “illegal surgeon” on a regular basis. Perhaps someone would even win the presidency by promising to crack down on “illegal surgeries.”
Of course, it is possible that you knew all of this, and you were simply trying to make a grammatical argument. If this is the case, then I suppose your argument is that even though illegal immigration is, by definition, the act of immigrating illegally, it cannot produce illegal immigrants, because an immigrant is a person, and a person cannot be illegal. If this is the case, I do not understand why you felt the need to spread your message through vandalism, which, as previously stated, is illegal and costs other people money. I have never met a person who cared about grammar to such an extent, and so I am inclined to believe that my first interpretation of your argument is the correct one, as has every person that I’ve had look over this article.
You have, at best, a comically poor grasp of the English language, and, at worst, a disturbing bigotry towards those whose grasp doesn’t meet your standards. If the former is the case, then your oh-so-important argument hinges on a misunderstanding of a commonly-used phrase that you could have learned to understand with a quick Google search. If the latter is the case, then I still don’t like you. Either way, Trump was right: “when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.”
With love,
Anonymous
(1) https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/yale-study-finds-twice-as-many-undocumented-immigrants-as-previous-estimates