That’s what they are. They’re unvetted, uncounted, unregistered, anonymous border crossers who snuck into our country and could be anybody, which puts all of us at risk. Some might be here for “the right reasons” and some may not, but the point is that we don’t know, and we need to know. Not to mention that even if we let too many of the “right reasons” folks in at a time, we’ll still run into a lot of problems.

Saying they’re here illegally doesn’t persuade people who don’t understand why sneaking into our country should be illegal in the first place. Saying they haven’t been vetted makes it clear why the act should be illegal in the first place. Saying someone shouldn’t do something simply because it’s illegal doesn’t fly with people who know that some laws are stupid and should be disobeyed. It becomes a sort of circular argument. Had we been calling them unvetted immigrants this whole time instead of illegal immigrants or illegal aliens I doubt so many libs would have jumped on the “no person is illegal” bullshit bandwagon. It would have worked better from a PR standpoint if you ask me because it points to why it should be illegal and not simply that it’s illegal.

I think it’s why those on the left (specifically young college students) were so easily persuaded that the right is just racist. Nobody was explaining to these children brains why we can’t just let anyone and everyone who wants to come here to come here without going through the vetting process. We aren’t anti/immigration on the right. We’re simply in favor of doing it in such a way as to allow us to maintain our safety and preserve our culture. There’s nothing racist about that, but it’s not something I heard being explained very well on our side over the last ten years when this really started to become a huge problem.

“Unvetted immigrants” would have accomplished that in my opinion.

“Anonymous immigrants” or “backdoor immigrants” would likely have worked as well. Yes, they’re invaders, but that word carries a lot of baggage that invites arguments. Shift the language of the argument in the right way and you eliminate a lot of those arguments. Labels matter.

I also think the word “unsustainable” should be used more.

Well…should have. At this point the argument is largely moot. Trump’s rounding them all up now regardless, as he should. Once that’s done then real, intelligent, careful conversations can once again be had about immigration policy moving forward. I just think we could have likely nipped a lot of this in the bud in the first place, marshaling more people to the cause, had we made better language choices up until now.