[EXPRESS.CO.UK] Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU's home affairs commissioner, said she wanted to "eradicate" the term from Brussels documents.Actually, there's no such thing as illegality. It's all a construct imposed on society by society. If nothing was regarded as illegal society would keel over dead.
She has instructed EU Commission staff to refer to foreigners who break border control laws as "irregular migrants" or simply "people" instead.
Too generic. How about "colonists?"
But her attempt to dictate how the issue of immigration is discussed was savaged last night.
No! Re-e-e-e-e-eally?
UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage said: "Now the EU is even trying to change the language.
Multilingually, assuming that's a word.
"This sounds like something straight out of the pages of George Orwell's Animal Farm. It shows that what we are dealing with here is a totalitarian mindset."
I don't think the term "George Orwell's Animal Farm" is used anymore. I think they replaced it with the term "Handbook for Eurocrats."
Mrs Malmstrom spoke out about the phrase "illegal immigrant" on Twitter yesterday. She praised the US news agency News Agency that Dare Not be Named, which dropped the phrase from its handbook on writing style for journalists.
"Illegal immigrant? Can't use that. Call it something else!"
"Yes, sir, chief!"
"And don't call me 'chief,' Olsen!"
"No, sir, chief!"
"And maybe we should do away with the word 'round.' After all, some things are ovals. Round implies some sort of symmetry, and people might think that's saying that 'round things' are perfect and 'oval things' aren't."
"Right, chief!"
"And the word 'thumb.' I think that should definitely go. Why distinguish a 'thumb' from any other finger? Even better, let's do away with the word 'toe' and refer to them all as 'digits.'"
"Yes, chief."
"And we should definitely do away with the word 'first.' Too non-inclusive."
In a message, she wrote: "The EU should follow. I've worked to eradicate the term 'illegal immigrant' from all commission docs. No human being is 'illegal', ever."
She's pretending the term describes the person exclusively of the act. In my miniature mind, if something is "illegal" it's against the law. An "immigrant," without an adjective, is presumed to be documented. The generic "people" is so generically dribbled that it applies to everyone, everywhere, the limit of inclusion being the anthropoid apes.
Vanilla never used to make me gag.