While we are holding our breath for our representatives to enact health care reform that includes a strong public option, Senator Max Baucus has already announced that any plan that comes out of his office will “not cover undocumented workers because that’s too politically explosive.”  The debate over coverage of undocumented workers has blazed in [...]

One can rarely enter into a discussion about immigration without hearing the term “illegal alien,” or references to undocumented immigrants as simply “illegals.” Our basic discourse has come to accept these terms, despite the fact that they are highly inaccurate and pejorative. Of course, not everyone who uses these terms intends to color undocumented immigrants with the stigma that these terms carry with them. Therefore, the purpose of this post is to explain why these terms should be eliminated from our discourse.