Using the Term “Illegal Immigrants” & Why CNN’s Jake Tapper Crossed the Line
Guest Blogger: Ryan Blackney, second-year law student, University of San Francisco:
Last week, during the second 2016 GOP debate hosted by CNN and aired on national television, Jake Tapper, CNN’s host and its chief Washington correspondent seemed to imbue the conversation with his own personal
take on the topic of immigration, when he posed a question to Republican candidate Dr. Ben Carson. Specifically, Jake Tapper said to Dr. Carson “I want to bring in Dr. Carson because he too has been skeptical of your plan to immediately deport 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants,” as he alluded to GOP candidate Donald Trump’s position on immigration. Not only is the use of the term quite ignorant, but it also adds fuel to the proverbial firestorm surrounding our broken immigration system and its much-needed reform.
Not only is the use of the term “illegal immigrants” derogatory but its use also relegates an entire group of persons – many of them who risked everything to build a better life in America – to a classification as inferior, second-class persons that are currently at the center of a heated partisan struggle over their fate. I’m not opining that Jake Tapper is some how a racist or saying that he hates Spanish-speaking persons that are undocumented in the U.S., yet what I am saying is that the ignorance exhibited by Mr. Tapper is one of the most fundamental and often used misconceptions by persons on both sides of the aisle when it comes to the debate around immigration reform. Mr. Tapper did not only cross an ethical/moral line by choosing to use the phrase “illegal immigrants,” but he also managed to blatantly disregard a mandate from his superiors at CNN, who explicitly instructed him not to use the term. Geraldine Moriba, CNN’s vice president of diversity, pledged ahead of the second GOP debate that the term “illegal” would not be used when referring to undocumented immigrants. Moriba’s pledge came on the heels of a call by some prominent Hispanic news organizations, such as the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (“NAHJ”), to ban the use of the term. This comes after news organizations, such as the Associated Press banned the use of the term when referring to a group of people. As such, the AP was one of the first news agencies to limit the use of the term in its guidelines as only being usable to describe an action, not when referring to a class of people. Indeed, I think the ignorant use of the term is a byproduct of deep-rooted cultural biases and a lack of education surrounding the framework of our immigration systems and its laws. Sure, the action of a person that has willfully overstayed his or her lawfully issued visa can be referred to as illegal or unlawful, however, defining an entire group of hard-working people striving to make a better life as illegal is both dehumanizing and a bit absurd. In fact, many people that came to the U.S. undocumented are some of the hardest working and most successful. Moreover, many of these persons are lawful residents and certainly speak better English than large swaths of the U.S.-born population in this country.
So, you may ask, what is the solution to this problem of misunderstanding and cultural biases? Well, as to Mr. Tapper, I think CNN needs to take a hard, long look at how it wants itself to be perceived, not only throughout the media world, but also how it wants to be portrayed throughout the Spanish-speaking world. If CNN fires Jake Tapper, I think that would be a miscalculation, a knee-jerk reaction of sorts. However, I do think that CNN, maybe through Ms. Moriba, needs to sit people like Mr. Tapper down and explain to him the cultural and socio-political significance of his words, especially the use of the term “illegal immigrants” on national television. Thus, only through education and cultural understanding, can we as a nation move forward in order to form a more perfect union. In the words of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, “no human being is illegal.” I have hope that the profound and instructive words of Mr. Wiesel can strike a chord with people throughout our great nation, and maybe even resonate with people like Mr. Tapper. For now, though, I’ll give Jake Tapper a mulligan, because my hope is that he’ll learn from his mistake, however innocent it may have been.
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