Trump's promised ICE raids have begun

Someone insisted that, in the United States, "illegal alien" is a legal term. PolitiFact took a long and careful look at that claim, concluding:
The term appears--yet scarcely--in federal law. Best we can tell, though, no law defines the term as referring to all individuals living in the U.S. without legal authorization. Where the term does appear, it’s undefined or part of an introductory title or limited to apply to certain individuals convicted of felonies.
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PolitiFact rated the claim "Half True".

The following analogy arose from that discussion. As an analogy, it might support the idea that the US government can adopt a contentious term of art for its own purposes, but its power to impose that terminology upon its states and citizens is limited.
grunion said:
“Gulf of Mexico” is the legal term for that body of water.
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Ziggurat said:
It was. Now it isn’t. What’s your point?
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According to the International Hydrographic Association, which is recognized as the competent international authority when it comes to nautical charting, its name is the Gulf of Mexico.

The United States is one of IHO's 102 member states. IHO Resolution 8 ("Treatment of Names of Features beyond a Single Sovereignty") recommends "that where two or more countries share a given geographical feature (such as, for example, a bay, a strait, channel or archipelago) under a different name form, they should endeavour to reach agreement on fixing a single name for the feature concerned." On the other hand, the IHO cannot compel agreement. Its member states retain the right to decide which names will be used by their own bureaucracies and, in the more autocratic states, by their populations at large.

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14172, which requires US federal agencies to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as "Gulf of America" and Denali as "Mount McKinley". Private entities and individual states of the United States are not bound by that executive order. The state of Alaska, for example, still recognizes "Denali" as the legal name of that mountain. The governors of Florida and Texas now speak of the "Gulf of America", but polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans opposed to that name change, both nationwide and in Florida. (As for Texas, I am not aware of any relevant polls.) Despite some rather heavy-handed arm-twisting by the Trump administration, the Gulf of Mexico continues to be known by that historic name (c 1550) in common usage. From the few court rulings that have been issued so far, it appears the Trump administration will be unable to overcome the First Amendment right of its people to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of Mexico.

Outside of the United States, the executive order has no legal force whatsoever. Most countries have simply ignored it. Mexico and the United Kingdom have said they will ignore it.

While checking on this, I learned that the Gulf of America was named after Amerika, which was a ship commanded by Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky. In 1972, the Gulf of America was renamed. It is now part of Nakhodka Bay.
 
arthwollipot said:
It's stigmatising. Weren't you paying attention?
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The term is not stigmatizing. Their actual status is.

You know the term "retard"? It's considered stigmatizing too. But did you know that it was introduced specifically to be a non-stigmatizing replacement for prior terms which were considered stigmatizing? Obviously it didn't work. Why? Because it's not the term itself that makes something stigmatizing or not, it's people's opinion of what the term describes. We're seeing the same thing with the attempt to replace "homeless" with "unhoused", as if it will change anything. It will not.
 
Is it a good use of Government Resources and Taxpayer Money to arrest, detain and deport someone in the process of obtaining their legal residency, with no other legal issues?
The manpower, infrastructure and flights amount to tens of thousands of dollars per person deported.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Is it a good use of Government Resources and Taxpayer Money to arrest, detain and deport someone in the process of obtaining their legal residency, with no other legal issues?
The manpower, infrastructure and flights amount to tens of thousands of dollars per person deported.
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Well, it's probably a lot easier than catching actual criminals.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Is it a good use of Government Resources and Taxpayer Money to arrest, detain and deport someone in the process of obtaining their legal residency, with no other legal issues?
The manpower, infrastructure and flights amount to tens of thousands of dollars per person deported.
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Definitely shows strange priorities.
 
Hercules56 said:
Definitely shows strange priorities.
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Yeah, it sounds kinda nutty to go after the people who are actualy trying to do the right thing, but it makes sense when you know they have been given a quota. Steven Miller wants to deprt a million immigrants a year, you that means about 3,000 a day. The pool of "bad" illegal immigrants is too small and hard to catch to sustain this for long, so ICE ends up going after everyone they can.
 
Random said:
Yeah, it sounds kinda nutty to go after the people who are actualy trying to do the right thing, but it makes sense when you know they have been given a quota. Steven Miller wants to deprt a million immigrants a year, you that means about 3,000 a day. The pool of "bad" illegal immigrants is too small and hard to catch to sustain this for long, so ICE ends up going after everyone they can.
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I thought it was 60 million illegals to be deported. That’s 45,000 people per day.
 
Ziggurat said:
Sure. But it hasn't been changed yet. So until then what's wrong with using the correct legal term?
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There is nothing at all wrong with referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of Mexico, as that continues to be the correct legal term for the Gulf of Mexico throughout most of the world and continues to be a correct legal term for the gulf even within the United States.

By Executive Order 14172, the government of the United States stipulated a different legal term for the part of the Gulf of Mexico's "continental shelf" that lies within or is adjacent to US territorial waters. That stipulation has no legal effect unless you are a US federal agency or working for a US federal agency and speaking on behalf of that agency.

As for what "continental shelf" means in that executive order, I'm guessing it was probably intended to mean the "extended continental shelf" of the "Gulf of Mexico", which has been and continues to be a legal term (at least within the United States) defined by a series of presidential proclamations beginning in 1945. It is clear, however, that Executive Order 14172 does not order the renaming of any part of the Gulf of Mexico beyond the portion of a continental shelf that lies within or adjacent to US territorial waters.

ETA: In February, the US Secretary of the Interior ordered the Board on Geographic Names to implement Executive Order 14172 by updating the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS). That order has given some people the impression that the renaming applies to the entire Gulf of Mexico, and I suspect that impression was purposeful. That misrepresentation of Executive Order 14172 was successful inasmuch as searching for "Gulf of Mexico" at the GNIS web site now brings up a local waterway in New York state along with a map that shows the entire Gulf of Mexico as "Gulf of America". On 9 February, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced H.R.276, the "Gulf of America Act", which "renames the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and directs federal agencies to update their documents and maps to incorporate the new name." That bill has passed the House and awaits action in the Senate. If the Senate passes the bill (which is doubtful) and it is signed by the President (as it would be), "Gulf of America" will then become a legal term. The bill also stipulates that any references to the "Gulf of Mexico" within a "law, map, regulation, document, paper, or other record of the United States" will be interpreted as a reference to the "Gulf of America". That means "Gulf of Mexico" will continue to be a legal term for the gulf, but would be interpreted as a synonym for "Gulf of America".

I find it interesting that someone who insists "illegal alien" is "the correct legal term" is equally wrong about the legal status of names that refer to the Gulf of Mexico or portions thereof.
 
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Ziggurat said:
The term is not stigmatizing. Their actual status is.

You know the term "retard"? It's considered stigmatizing too. But did you know that it was introduced specifically to be a non-stigmatizing replacement for prior terms which were considered stigmatizing? Obviously it didn't work. Why? Because it's not the term itself that makes something stigmatizing or not, it's people's opinion of what the term describes. We're seeing the same thing with the attempt to replace "homeless" with "unhoused", as if it will change anything. It will not.
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Exactly. Steven Pinker refers to this phenomenon as the "Euphemism Treadmill", whereby words become taboo over time because it's the underlying phenomenon/condition that's stigmatising, not the word. I've seen it happen several times in my lifetime already.
 
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