ICE Is Going After People Who Were Once Off-Limits

ICE Is Going After People Who Were Once Off-Limits: Could this be game-changing?'



It's time to set terminology on the table and check it out with the microscope and call things as they really and truly are.



Let's start with the term illegal immigrant.



If you showed inside the national territory of the United States without papers, if you snuck in illegally, if you didn't jump the hoops that all LEGAL immigrants and refugees, such as my now late parents, willingly jumped through to show up and stay here legally, then you ARE NO immigrant.  Instead, you're an illegal alien.



If you came legally like the millions of legal immigrants who came to the United States toward the turning of the 19th to 20th Century, and you had your papers in order, and you were allowed in because you followed the rules, then you qualify to be regarded legally as an immigrant.



If you've been here a long time but you were whole time here illegally, then all that time you were here was illegal time.  You didn't do the legal stuff you're required to do, to stay. Then you're not entitled to be here. And whatever merits you suppose you earned, then all that effort was for nothing.



In the end, on balance, Immigration is a personal responsibility issue.