Losing Our Minds over Immigration

On the issue of immigration, politicians and much of the mainstream media are playing with our minds. By repeating the phrase "illegal immigrants," they're creating a misleading stereotype. It's inaccurate. And, it's distracting us from the real issue -- economic exploitation of all low-wage workers in the United States.

The Republicans did it in their YouTube debate on CNN. In the first 30 minutes, the Republicans repeatedly used the term "illegal immigrant" and spent the time sparring over which of them could treat them more harshly. Were the painters who worked on Romney's house and the low-wage workers in Giuliani's New York City really such a grave threat to America?

CNN's John King used the term, too. And so did CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Campbell Brown in the most recent Democratic debate in Las Vegas. And, some of the Democratic candidates also used it, though Kucinich specifically refused ("There are no illegal human beings"). But he's in the minority. The term is everywhere in the press. You can find it in the Washington Post and in the New York Times, as well as the doubly derogatory term "illegal alien" in the Washington Times. They've all got "illegal" on the brain.

The repeated use of the term "illegal immigrants" is leading to all sorts of policies created to stop them. Many of them were repeated in the debates. More border fences. Prohibiting driver's licenses. Some want to stop their kids from attending neighborhood elementary schools.

But the phrase "illegal immigrant" is misleading. There's a grain of truth, but the emphasis is only selectively applied -- it's misapplied -- we don't call speeders "illegal drivers" or people who jaywalk "illegals." And that selective application to immigrants is harmful. As Lawrence Downes wrote in a New York Times op-ed:

There is no way out of that trap. It's the crime you can't make amends for. Nothing short of deportation will free you from it, such is the mood of the country today. And that is a problem.

There sure is a problem. So much so that the National Association of Hispanic Journalists won't use it. They recommend using "undocumented" instead. That's a start.

Branding people with the Scarlet "I" creates a fearful stigma. The vast majority of immigrants, whatever their legal status, are law-abiding members of society. Yet, the "illegal" description is so pervasive that it has us thinking about punishment and revenge, instead of solutions to the real problem -- the economic exploitation of people, both immigrant and native-born.

How did that happen?

In part, it's all in our heads; it's how our minds work. To understand the world, we unconsciously create categories of things. We understand these categories by, again unconsciously, creating central examples that represent how we envision the basic properties of the group.

Think of a bird, for example. What first pops into your mind? Most likely something akin to a sparrow, maybe a robin. It's unlikely that your unconscious, initial image will be an ostrich or a penguin. Or even a duck or an eagle. These are all birds, but they are not what we instinctively envision as the typical bird. In fact, our unconscious category example need not be the most common bird or even an actual bird at all. Nevertheless, the typical example you have in your mind allows you to organize, understand and apply what you experience about birds.

Our categorizations serve a useful purpose. They allow us to process lots of information very quickly. Much faster than if we were to try and consciously think through a list of characteristics about everything we encounter all day long in the world. We'd be paralyzed, like the computer icon spinning on your screen while the web page loads. So, in many situations, we're very fortunate that our brains work in this manner. Otherwise, we'd never get through the characteristics of the mental category "animals with big teeth." We'd have been eaten.