Banishing Immigration Newspeak

For nearly thirty years, Michigan's Lake Superior State
University has released an annual List of Banished Words, a brief
inventory of the year's most annoyingly popular expressions, with
the recommendation they be "banished from the Queen's English for
mis-use, over-use and general uselessness."

This year, the tiresome "metrosexual" and the insufferable "bling
bling" were deservedly condemned, as were several war-inspired
entrants such as "embedded journalist" and "smoking gun." I was
disappointed that none of my three choices for this annual
dishonor made the cut, however. My nominees for banishment were:
"Guest worker program," "Matching willing workers with willing
employers," and the worst offender, "Work Americans won't do," as
in "our economy needs illegal immigrants because they do work
Americans won't do."

Combined, these three Orwellian phrases are calculated to convey
the impression that there are certain occupations so inherently
dangerous or otherwise disagreeable that we lazy, self-indulgent,
American crybabies must rely on hardy immigrant stock to roll up
their sleeves and get the job done for us. Tell that to a
Pennsylvania coal miner!

Although it's true that less glamorous jobs are frequently filled
by illegal aliens, the jobs themselves are not intrinsically
unacceptable. Rather, the ready supply of illegal labor has
resulted in many perfectly satisfactory jobs becoming
unacceptable. In short, illegal aliens will work under unsanitary
and unsafe conditions for minimum wage or even less, thereby
lowering standards, and as long as employers can fill jobs by
exploiting illegals, there will simply be no incentive to improve
wages or working conditions.

A recent piece by Nancy L. Oth