Ten years ago, a team of four kids from Carl Hayden Community HIgh School in West Phoenix - undocumented immigrants from Mexico - swept the top awards in a remotely operated underwater vehicle competition for college students, sponsored by NASA and the Office of Naval Research. One kid was a mechanical whiz who came up with the idea of powering the vehicle by a battery that would double as ballast, providing greater mobility then the alternative of tethering to an above-water power supply. Another was an ROTC-trained leader who spearheaded the fundraising ($800 from local businesses) and convinced an industry scientist to field the team's technical questions in a conference call. Playing the role of Jaime Escalante were two science teachers at the school who acted as the team's advisors. The team choose PVC pipe to frame their vehicle, partly because they couldn't afford the welded metal frames used by most of the college teams.
Of course, when the team arrived at the competition site and made a trial run, disaster struck, just as in the movies. And their competition included a 12-man team from MIT.
The author of the 2005 Wired story, Joshua Davis, has just expanded the story into a book. Thanks in large part to donations that flew in after the Wired piece (their immigration status prevented them from getting Federal loans), the four kids were able to stay in the USA; here's what they've been up to. Meanwhile the folks at MIT have been good sports about it.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday December 04 2014, @01:42PM
I love this story. It should be curriculum at every high school.
Amazing people are not distributed only in those of certain class, culture and origin. Not enough people to see and act on this - too many "realists" who kill humanity with their thoughts alone.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @02:31PM
Such a great way in which the american society uses and rewards [wikipedia.org] a proved potential.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday December 04 2014, @02:38PM
I don't. And here's why:
First of all, this story is ten years old and shamelessly politicized and brought out of the junk pile as a carefully selected propaganda tool to convince people that unfettered immigration will bring only geniuses who can build Mars rockets out of duct tape and '86 Cutlass Supremes.
Wired. So it's written by people who would champion unfettered unskilled immigration, just as long as those immigrants stay the hell away from their overpriced coffee shops and restored Victorians. Wow. How righteous of them.
Hell, just read the first few paragraphs of the article:
So if that doesn't give you hope and change about what you can expect with unfettered unskilled immigration, at least you can enjoy a hearty chuckle at how patronizing the article is. Hispanics like George Lopez and Carlos Mencia are allowed to be patronizing like that, in fact they've built their entire careers on it. A Wired writer named Joshua Davis? Not so much.
Would this make a good movie? Sure. Are some undocumented immigrants intelligent, hard workers and good students? Sure, I grew up in the Imperial Valley and had a lot as friends. Does this mean that we should allow each and every one to stay? Hells no, it doesn't, and the only people who think they should are White Liberals who reside in Napa Valley and The Hamptons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @03:59PM
"unfettered immigration will bring only geniuses"
Nobody thinks that.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday December 04 2014, @04:03PM
Counter false anti-merit elitism. Always.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2, Informative) by hoeferbe on Thursday December 04 2014, @06:52PM
It has been made into this soon-to-be released movie [imdb.com]. I thought the article's abstract sounded familiar!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @06:59PM
Okay, I'll bite.
First of all, this story is ten years old and shamelessly politicized and brought out of the junk pile as a carefully selected propaganda tool to convince people that unfettered immigration will bring only geniuses who can build Mars rockets out of duct tape and '86 Cutlass Supremes.
The intent of the speaker does not influence the validity of their argument.
Wired. So it's written by people who would champion unfettered unskilled immigration, just as long as those immigrants stay the hell away from their overpriced coffee shops and restored Victorians. Wow. How righteous of them.
The identity of the speaker does not influence the validity of their argument.
So if that doesn't give you hope and change about what you can expect with unfettered unskilled immigration, at least you can enjoy a hearty chuckle at how patronizing the article is. Hispanics like George Lopez and Carlos Mencia are allowed to be patronizing like that, in fact they've built their entire careers on it. A Wired writer named Joshua Davis? Not so much.
The format of the message does not influence the validity of the argument.
Would this make a good movie? Sure. Are some undocumented immigrants intelligent, hard workers and good students? Sure, I grew up in the Imperial Valley and had a lot as friends. Does this mean that we should allow each and every one to stay? Hells no, it doesn't, and the only people who think they should are White Liberals who reside in Napa Valley and The Hamptons.
However, it doesn't mean the opposite either. You can't extrapolate that if A does not prove B, then B is necessarily false.
(Score: 1) by Jiro on Friday December 05 2014, @12:15AM
Just like in a few million people you'll find a couple of bad apples, in a few million people you'll find a couple of good apples. To mix a metaphor, you just have to cherry-pick.
So it is of course true that given the huge number of illegal aliens, you'll find a couple like these. But the subtext of the article is that we should think of typical illegal aliens as being like this, not just that someone picked a couple of unrepresentative examples. And of course picking unrepresentative examples is exactly what this is about.
Furthermore, implying "illegal immigration is okay because some of the illegal immigrants turn out to be robotics experts" is a little like pointing out that some car thieves are smart people whose lives are improved just enough by having a car that they manage to become robotics experts. It really doesn't matter if the car thieves manage to get educated just because they can steal a car, or if we gain when car thieves steal cars, finance their education, and invent something that helps everyone--the car doesn't belong to them, and you can't justify the theft just because you or other people benefited from the theft. The same goes when someone is effectively stealing a piece of a country instead of a car.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday December 04 2014, @02:41PM
I love this story. It should be curriculum at every high school.
Because we can never have too much feelgood fluff at our schools.
I think what's most reprehensible about the current strain of illegal immigration and immigration amnesty propaganda is the complete ignoring of those who played by the rules and spent the ridiculous amount of time jumping through the right hoops (as well as unskilled workers in the US who have to compete with the illegal immigrants). Any serious attempt to make a fair immigration scheme has to massively overhaul the legal side (and possibly the issue of minimum wage as well), not just bypass it for favored ethnic groups. Instead, it's just another transparent ploy to win/import more voters of a particular class, culture, and origin (namely, poor Hispanic immigrants from Central and South America) over to the Democrat Party.
My view is that legal immigration needs to be vastly simplified, possibly to the point of just paying a fair amount of money (let's say $20k) and submitting to a basic background check in order to get a green card.
too many "realists" who kill humanity with their thoughts alone.
If your beliefs can't handle a few realists, then it's probably for the best that your beliefs die a quiet death.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by CirclesInSand on Thursday December 04 2014, @04:04PM
$20k for the rights of citizenship? Maybe we can extend your idea, and anyone who pays $50k can have their 4th amendment rights respected too.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 05 2014, @10:11AM
(Score: 2) by novak on Thursday December 04 2014, @08:38PM
As an American citizen, I would hope that anyone with $20k to burn would pick a better place to go than America. That is also ridiculous because it favors immigrants from rich countries. So if you are coming from a poor part of Africa, you'd have to work your entire life expectancy to earn that much money, and spend none of it on food or plane tickets to get here (depending of course, on where in Africa, and what you do). The last thing we need in America is MORE ways to get preferential treatment by throwing around money, although I suppose that is an honest advertisement.
novak
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 05 2014, @10:14AM
As an American citizen, I would hope that anyone with $20k to burn would pick a better place to go than America.
Why don't you go to this "better place"?
That is also ridiculous because it favors immigrants from rich countries.
Not seeing the problem since rich countries don't tend to generate a lot of immigrants to the US.
(Score: 2) by novak on Friday December 05 2014, @08:35PM
Why don't you go to this "better place"?
To answer your question literally, because there are lots of other factors besides "average social conditions as ranked by me." I don't want to go anywhere, particularly, even places that I do think are better. I'm assuming you don't mean to say that you think the US actually is the best place to live. But my comment was an offhand insult directed towards my nation, so I suppose your comment was in keeping with that.
Not seeing the problem since rich countries don't tend to generate a lot of immigrants to the US.
Hm, maybe my comment was not really descriptive of the entire problem. It's not so much "people from wealthy nations" as "wealthy people from any nation." I dislike selling people privileges. I wouldn't mind simplifying the process, but I dislike making it a purchase.
novak
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 05 2014, @11:53PM
To answer your question literally, because there are lots of other factors besides "average social conditions as ranked by me." I don't want to go anywhere, particularly, even places that I do think are better. I'm assuming you don't mean to say that you think the US actually is the best place to live. But my comment was an offhand insult directed towards my nation, so I suppose your comment was in keeping with that.
I agree. This sort of claim does depend on your point of view. And from other peoples' point of view, the US is attractive enough destination that they'll risk coming here illegally in the millions.
Hm, maybe my comment was not really descriptive of the entire problem. It's not so much "people from wealthy nations" as "wealthy people from any nation." I dislike selling people privileges. I wouldn't mind simplifying the process, but I dislike making it a purchase.
I don't. Keep in mind that $20k from the poorest people on Earth would allow them permanent entrance to the US just as easily as $20k from the wealthiest.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Thursday December 04 2014, @01:59PM
How does an undocumented immigrant get ROTC training?
(Score: 4, Informative) by cmn32480 on Thursday December 04 2014, @02:10PM
As of pretty recently they can join the Army and it gives a path to citizenship.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/25/policy-to-allow-undocumented-immigrants-in-military/16225135/ [usatoday.com]
A quick Google of the terms "undocumented immigrant army" gives a host of results dealing with the same things listed in the article above from many sources.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Thursday December 04 2014, @06:15PM
Oh, thanks for the info!
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Thursday December 04 2014, @06:18PM
The whole "undocumented immigrant" thing confuses me. Undocumented means illegal right? On the one hand I think serving means they are earning that citizenship. More power to them, good for them! On the other hand.. so one part of the government is supposed to be hunting them for deportation and another is accepting them to be one of it's own? it's like having a judge with multiple personality disorder. Insane!
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday December 04 2014, @06:29PM
America needs more willing bodies to fight unpopular wars and accept low standards of living in exchange for political loyalty.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday December 05 2014, @02:39PM
Yes and no. This is a rather pedantic point, but it does not mean they *are* illegal, it means they once did something illegal. Laws only deal with actions. So coming here without proper documentation is an illegal action, but the person who does so is not "illegal", they are "undocumented".
Not really. The FBI recently started accepting people who smoke pot...so it's not like the military is the only government branch recruiting criminals. There's also some criminal hackers hired by intelligence services. And I'm sure they hire plenty of people with other forms of criminal records. With how many troops we have, there's gotta be at least a couple soldiers in the US army who once stole a car or mugged someone or something. Which gets back to my earlier point a bit -- these are not "illegal people", these are people who committed one fairly minor, non-violent crime. The military could (and probably does) do a lot worse.
And I'm pretty sure once they join the army, the DHS would *stop* hunting them for deportation. That's kind of the point. We need bodies to send overseas, so we pay them for joining one goon squad by calling off another.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 05 2014, @05:07PM
Now you are playing semantics. They used to universally be referred to as "illegal immigrants" because they were immigrants who are here illegally. *Nothing* has changed as far as the illegality of their immigration status. What has changed is that a re-branding campaign has been largely successful in terms of its adoption to attempt to create doubt on whether or not their immigration status is clearly illegal or not. "Undocumented" is just the beginning step to changing immigration law and policy so immigrants don't have to pay any mind to immigration controls. Just ignore the law and come on over. You will be rewarded for breaking it. Those who obey it, well, they are the suckers.
The goal is to change immigration law to declare illegal immigrants legal -or- change policy to grant a huge increase in visas so they can come legally -or-, should those measures not pass, to simply ignore immigration laws. In other words, legal or not, the immigration amnesty types will do whatever they want to do. This is just demonstrated fact.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Tuesday December 09 2014, @04:53PM
" it does not mean they *are* illegal, it means they once did something illegal."
Ok, saying that they ARE illegal isn't really correct, that would be saying their very existence is illegal which would be awfull. I was being lazy writing it that way thinking the point would be obvious. But, it is more than just the act of coming here that is illegal isn't it? Isn't remaining also illegal if you came here in an illegal way and have not been through some sort of process that includes amnesty? Wouldn't that be an ongoing criminal act, not just a one time past criminal event?
"Not really. The FBI recently started..."
Well, just because the government is also doing it elsewhere doesn't really make it make sense. It could just as easily be used as evidence that the government is that much more insane!
"We need bodies to send overseas, so we pay them for joining one goon squad by calling off another"
Well.. at least since WWII the point of use "NEEDING" to send bodies to the particular times and places where we have is certainly debatable but that's a topic for another conversation. Either way you go with that one obviously the powers that be want those bodies so sure, it makes sense to "pay" people to volunteer by "calling off the goons". It seems to me though that it could at least be done officially, giving them some sort of legal immigrant status rather than just saying.. "yah.. those guys are hare illegally but they are volunteering so we look the other way". Maybe some sort of work permit that cancels immediately if they go a-wall and matures into citizenship after an honourable discharge.
Or is that what they do.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday December 09 2014, @06:36PM
Yeah I'm pretty sure that is what they do, but I could be wrong...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @02:28PM
Didn't you hear? The US military is now a mercenary force [nytimes.com].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 04 2014, @03:36PM
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday December 04 2014, @05:42PM
It's been around for a while too. I met one person in the program and she liked it. Receiving full citizenship benefits for just being born does clash a bit for having to earn it via service (even non-military).
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Sir Garlon on Thursday December 04 2014, @02:54PM
If you read the story, only one out of the four former students has anything that could be called a career in technology. Obviously, lack of motivation or talent was not their problem. I am disappointed (with society, not the men) but not surprised: where you end up depends largely on where you start.
In a just world, all four would have received full scholarships to engineering school.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday December 04 2014, @03:46PM
Get it right. Where you end up is a function of your drive, ambition, and talent relative to where you start. If you start out rich but are a fscking moron with none of the above, you will end up poor. If you start out poor with all of the three, you will almost certainly end up middle class and very likely end up rich, assuming rich was your goal to begin with.
If you piss and moan about every little hardship or setback, you will fail. If you absolutely refuse to accept failure, you will succeed.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @04:18PM
If you start out rich but are a fscking moron with none of the above, you will end up poor
When will Paris Hilton end up poor?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday December 04 2014, @04:33PM
Likely never. She has ambition even if it is very odd ambition and has talent enough to know to hire people with more talent and lots of drive to make up for her shortcomings.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @06:32PM
That's why George Bush pretended to be stupid too (he may have been no genius but he sure wasn't that dumb - he got re-elected, so go figure).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @10:14PM
What's your source on that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @10:06PM
This is utter bullshit, an ideologically-matched ideal from a self-selecting sample of people who did manage to succeed. I've worked harder than you've imagined is possible - according to my doctor, the brain injury people at the local rehab center, and a bunch of occupational therapists I should not have been able to graduate with my degree, but I did. This hasn't helped me find employment, nor has the 10 years experience I have in the field. If I'd known about my disability before engaging on that course of study, I would have chosen a different field, but coulda-woulda-shoulda. I am now unemployable because I know I have the disability, but this doesn't mean I've stopped trying.
You see, the trick to proving your ideology is actually true is to find the number of those who didn't succeed, rather than pointing at those who made it and claiming that it can be done. It's not like someone has said "It's impossible to drive at 162 kilometres per hour," which is simple to disprove. It's more like claiming that everyone can be president.
That's the basic logical flaw behind saying everyone can get a job - you point to those who have jobs and say "See, they have jobs! Work harder and you'll get one!" Your assumption - that there are sufficient jobs out there for everyone - is wrong.
Imagine a situation where there is one job as president, and you're one of 2000 applicants. Only one can be president, and your work has little bearing on that because everyone else has roughly the same level of drive and experience that you have. Suddenly, it's not so easy, is it? Work harder!
while (everyone_else_works_harder) {
work_harder_still;
}
Or perhaps non-verbal cues will give you the edge, whether someone on the hiring staff has something in common with you, if you've any sign of weakness, a disability, or any other number of factors.
I'm certain you'll find that the number of those who tried, are still trying, and those who never made it before they could no longer work, are much, much greater than those who did.
Success isn't a hole where you just keep digging until you hit the gold at the bottom. Luck, family, wealth, the city you live in, these are all major factors in where you can end up. Do you think Bill Gates didn't go to jail for theft of computer resources at university because he worked hard? Or do you think the large check written by his (lawyer) father had some influence there?
Would John Q. Brown, from the ghetto, have had the same luck getting away with it? Of course not, his parents don't have the money to throw at a university to make jail go away.
Mind you, John Q. Brown, from the ghetto, probably wouldn't be able to afford to go to university.
I'll give you some examples of how you can disprove me, though.
As examples, go find me a world champion sprinter with spinabifida, a world champion archer (or rifle shooter) who is blind and has no assistance other than his own skill, and a top level rally driver with one arm.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday December 04 2014, @11:41PM
I think we've pretty well proven that with the last two.
Oh, I'm sorry, I should have specified that the goal be physically possible. I guess I took for granted that nobody was stupid enough to set a goal of eating their weight in rocks in a day or similar.
Still, for every sob story of failure you can give me, I can show you someone who overcame the exact same thing, short of death, to achieve something worthwhile. One arm? How's this [youtube.com] for one arm.
Until you accept failure and start voting Democrat, every hardship is simply a setback.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Friday December 05 2014, @11:20AM
If you're referring to Obama & Bush, what they actually proved was that being born into an affluent (or outright rich) family can partially compensate for setbacks to a degree. If we lump Bill Clinton in there, the lesson instead is that having a distinct advantage of some kind (he was born poor, but extremely intelligent) can help a person compensate for disadvantages.
Unfortunately, that's statistically inaccurate: for any major disadvantage, it's only the small percent of people the right advantages (and enough to offset that particular disadvantage) actually reach true success despite the setback. It's akin to somebody becoming a "star" athlete, writer, actor, or musical artist: yes, some pull it off, but they're outnumbered by the number of people that didn't have all of the pieces fall into place.
That's speaking as one of the lucky exceptions (birth defects, autistic, poor, health problems, etc.). When I was young, I had the same attitude that you do: basically, that I had succeeded because I was smart and determined, therefore almost anyone could if they tried hard enough. It wasn't until my mid-twenties that I realized my success had hinged not only on my traits, but on having smart, highly supportive parents that put in a ton of time & effort into making sure I'd have the chance to use my intelligence, talent & drive. If any of the pieces in that puzzle were missing — if I didn't have any particular talents, was prone to depression, had even more health issues, etc. — then I wouldn't have succeeded, or at best would've had success severely delayed.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday December 05 2014, @12:12PM
That was mostly just snark. Pay it no nevermind if you like but don't go digging too deep for meaning.
No, it was accurate enough. Most people don't have goals of being the drummer for Def Leppard or President; they just want a home, a family, and a job that allows them to not live paycheck to paycheck. That, I think, also qualifies as "something worthwhile" and is within pretty much everyone's grasp, regardless of obstacles.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by bootsy on Thursday December 04 2014, @04:17PM
Sadly parental involvement is one of the most influencial factors in how your life turns out. There have been plenty of studies on school students and they all show that if the parents are involved in some way in their child's education then they do a lot better. Involved can be paying for private schools, paying for additional tuition if not in a private school, spending time with children and supervising the homework and making sure they understand what they have been taught ( free in terms of cost, but surprising how many don't think it is their job to do this ) and keeping them thinking over the long holiday day breaks ( again a lot of research that shows poorer students slip back in the summer as they forget what they have learnt ).
There was an interesting piece of research on UK Graduates that showed that if the child of upper middle class parents didn't get a top degree it didn't matter that much as mum and dad would pull some strings and get them a job anyway or the connections they had made in their schools and universities took care of it.
The sucess of the Google founders was also partly down to their relatives having the money to fund their fledgling project in the early days.
We are a long way from being a meritocracy.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday December 04 2014, @05:16PM
The article explained that one of the students couldn't finish college in part because of financial reasons. What was the other unmentioned part?
And why does everybody assume that because people are good at something that that's what they want to do for a living for the rest of their lives? Maybe growing up in an urban, blue-collar upbringing is what they feel most comfortable with?
And for the record, I work in that very industry, underwater electronics. I know a few things about what that aspect of the real world is really like compared to cute little high-school competition. Some people prefer to handle a different kind of bullshit than they'd have to handle as an engineer in this (and most other) industries.
For starters, only 1 or 2 engineers in the entire company are actually "hands-on" and get to go out to the water. The rest are stuck in the cube-farm designing to deadlines and constraints, often never touching the things they actually design. It's like being Picasso and forced to paint in two colors on 8X12-inch canvasses for the rest of your life. It costs too much for expensive engineers to leave their cube-farms and keep doing the one thing they know how to do, and the only thing that matters in the bottom-line.
In that environment, those people tend to have a lot less of a tolerance of direct talk, criticism, and especially insults and horseplay. There are too many mommas' boys with egos with too little collective wisdom. Liking the same Anime movies and Call of Duty games is about the extent of the horseplay and "bro culture" you'd get, and telling another engineer to "Fuck Off" will get you a seat in HR.
I get to do the fun stuff, going out on the water all the time, playing with the stuff, understanding its real-world behavior and what it can and can't tolerate. I know more about the systems as a whole than most of the engineers here for one frank reason -- I'm a cheap technician. My skills are not so advanced and expensive, from the bean-counters' (heh) perspective, that I'm stuck doing one expensive thing all day, every day.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @06:10PM
"Undocumented"? You mean illegal immigrant?
Please Soylent, don't be PC. Be accurate.
(Score: 2) by N3Roaster on Friday December 05 2014, @12:18AM
Actions can be illegal, but people aren't. "Illegal immigrant," while a common construction among those with a particular world view, is not an accurate phrase. It's political slant.
Typica - Free software for coffee roasting professionals. [typica.us]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 05 2014, @12:42AM
That is worse political slant. It suggests that they just lost some paperwork, oh isn't that sad, we should give them some.
The long-used historical term is "illegal alien". I'm pretty sure this is actually the proper term according to law.
I could go for "criminal immigrant". Does that make you feel any better? It's very accurate. I could also go for "International trespasser" I suppose, but that is a mouthful.
(Score: 1) by CirclesInSand on Friday December 05 2014, @09:59PM
"Undocumented" is more accurate because that literally is the difference. The distinction between immigrants that have citizenship rights and those that don't is a government database.
They haven't robbed or harmed anyone. They don't enjoy rights that others can't , exactly the opposite in fact. To claim that they have done something illegal is absurd, as their citizenship is PURELY a function of the decisions of OTHER people. Making them beg for equal rights makes those who support this policy undeserving of their own rights.
(Score: 2) by khedoros on Friday December 05 2014, @01:15AM
For greater precision, you've got several pieces of information to consider. Was the entry into the country documented? Is the presence in the country still legal? Has any law been broken (unlawful entry into the country, overstaying the visa, etc)? If a law has been broken, then was the person of age when they broke the law? Any term that ignores some facets of the situation in favor of others is a term with a political motivation behind it. A phrase like "illegal immigrant" or "undocumented immigrant" can be accurate without being precise (and both are imprecise, in their own ways). Both precision and accuracy matter in the discussion of immigration.
All that is a discussion of legality though, which has little or nothing to do with whether the current situation is morally correct. I suspect that the "particular worldview" that you mentioned, and the opposing view, would be strongly correlated to the question of whether the current law (degree of enforcement aside) is morally acceptable or not.
(Score: 2) by N3Roaster on Friday December 05 2014, @02:52AM
I agree with much of what you've written, but would suggest that both terms are neither accurate nor precise and add that picking nits over which was chosen in the title is unlikely to provoke an honest and nuanced policy debate. As you've noted, the choice of terms says more about the person doing the labelling than it does about the person labelled. Good for whipping up a crowd, but we could do with a lot less of that in our politics.
Typica - Free software for coffee roasting professionals. [typica.us]
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday December 05 2014, @03:06PM
The term "illegal immigrant" is entirely inappropriate for a site like Soylent. It may be more common, but it is technically incorrect.
Laws do not deal with people. We don't call rapists "illegal fornicators", do we? The rapist is not illegal; the rape is. Likewise, the immigrant is not illegal. The immigrant is merely undocumented. It is the *act* of coming here without the proper documentation which is illegal. People can't be illegal, only actions can.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @06:41PM
Ten years ago, a team of four kids from Carl Hayden Community HIgh School in West Phoenix - illegal immigrants from Mexico...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @07:31PM
Redundant point is redundant.
First mentioned here [soylentnews.org] and then also here [soylentnews.org] before you...
TL;DR version: lurk moar