Legally speaking, if you enter the country without entering through a port of entry? That is actually ILLEGAL. Therefore, its not a stretch to use the word "ILLEGAL ALIEN".
Just for reference:
8 U.S. Code § 1325 - Improper entry by alien
Improper time or place; avoidance of examination or inspection; misrepresentation and concealment of facts
Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.
An illegal alien is a title / designation. Just like an illegal vendor, unregulated industry, or ineligible participant. Person first language is a good thing, but only recent political events have taken up the "No person is illegal" wordsmithing.
By moving the designator illegal from the activity to the person, you are criminalizing their being instead of their deed. It is a way of dehumanizing people.
Yes, I understand what you mean. And I tend to agree. I'm just making space for intent, and as much as words matter, intent also matters.
A person who entered the country illegally is not incorrectly (even if roughly) abbreviated as an "illegal alien", since alien is a designation for "person of a foreign country" in this case. It's true this can be misused, but it's also true I don't think OP misused it or intended to, and even if it could be interpreted as a rough slight, I'd prefer we took the charitable stance, evaluated intent in context, and stayed out of semantics and focused on the issue (in this case whether such individuals receive funded health care benefits).
That's really it. If you disagree and think this was the time to call that out, that's ok, I just disagree and don't have anything more to say on it. Cheers.
Everybody knows that illegal migrant means an migrant who is illegal present in the country.
You're only trying to say that it means "his humanity is against the law" to stigmatize people who care about law enforcement.
If the term "illegal migrant" offends them then that's a good thing, because you should be ashamed when you break the law.
When you call an illegal a "undocumented migrant" you're essentially downplaying the illegality of the act. It's just as bad as calling a rapist an "undocumented lover". You're de-stigmatizing breaking the law.
Maybe this is the reality he was trying to point out?
California’s $6 Billion Band-Aid: The Cost of Covering Illegal Immigrants
Last week it was announced that Governor Gavin Newsom is seeking a $3.44 billion loan from California’s general fund, as well as an immediate additional $2.8 billion in funding, to cover over-budget expenses incurred by our state’s Medi-Cal program.[1] Why is the program over budget and underfunded? There are a few factors that have gone into it, but the main reason comes down to the fact that the state expanded Medi-Cal to include coverage for illegal immigrants, and they underestimated how many of these participants would sign up to the program.[2]
In the early 2000's when the dot com bubble burst, a well known commercial real estate developer here had the same idea because many of the large corporate buildings went empty or went into foreclosure or had various other financial issues.
He bought one and I was told by several contractors who worked for him that he would brag about the sweetheart deal the city gave him and how little he would have to pay to convert the buildings into town homes. Because of the dot com bust, he also got a bottom floor deal on the price of the building.
It took several years to convert, but that's kind of when the wheels started to fall off. 9 people (at last count) were charged with mortgage fraud in a kick back scheme. They tried to buy up a bunch of the condos and then planned to resell them at higher prices. They were using ghost buyers to get financing.
Ironically the developer was never charged, but several real estate agents and their brokers plead guilty to fraud. The developer had also bought several other buildings with the intention of doing the same. None of them ever came to fruition and by the time the 2008 housing crash rolled around, he had lost two of the other three buildings to foreclosure and I'm not sure what happened to the other one.
The developer just got lucky. Right time to buy low and sell high, but then once he was straddled with market cost of the building and no sweetheart deals on labor and tax breaks from the city? It quickly became apparent unless you have very, very deep pockets, a conversion like this is very expensive and takes a long time for you to see any return on your investment.
On the bright side if you google the name "Cloud 9 Sky Flats Hopkins MN" you'll see the building they used. There are several local real estate companies who still sell the flats and they are amazing with incredible views of the city.
Here's some articles about the Cloud 9 Flats fraud:
I think this is more a function of “development is hard and there are a lot of fraudsters” vs conversions specifically. Conversions are harder than an average development but there are hundreds of similar stories for normal ground up.
There's currently 31 states who have bills to ban geoengineering. Its not just red states, there are plenty of "blue states" on the list as well. Painting this as a partisan political issue is just stupid. California is set to join the list as well.
March 2025:
As of this week, 31 out of 50 U.S. states—well over half the nation—have introduced legislation to ban or severely limit geoengineering and weather modification operations. Just days ago, on March 24th, that number stood at 24. Seven new states have joined in under a week, reflecting an undeniable groundswell of public awareness and political will.
You “hate this political stuff” and then you link to a bizarre Substack where the first quote is from noted non-partisan scientist RFK Jr, and he’s claiming that because multiple states have introduced legislation that implies a groundswell of public opinion against evil geoengineering.
Anyone can introduce legislation. Keep this off HN.
A) Quotes from politicians don't discount the facts of the matter.
B) Had you spent five minutes researching what's going on, you would've seen an article from last year about Alameda City, a city in California (yes, THAT California, the supposed VERY BLUE STATE California) that banned geoengineering:
June 2024:
A Northern California city council voted early Wednesday morning to cancel the nation’s first outdoor experiment into the potential to limit global warming by altering cloud behavior.
The five-member Alameda City Council voted unanimously to reject University of Washington researchers’ aerial spraying of liquefied salt from the deck of a retired aircraft carrier in San Francisco Bay, two months after the experiment began.
And shockingly, the report isn't in some strange substack. Its actually a well known LEFT LEANING site - Politico:
Used to stay and work in ND during my Summers in college. One of the businesses I worked for was a bin sealing company. The owner was a successful farmer and during the Summer, he would have two large families get work visas and would come up and help from Mexico during the Summer harvest.
It was basically three months of sun up to sun down work. At the end of the Summer, the family would celebrate and put on a huge fiesta and cook food for everybody. The farmer paid them extremely well and they would leave and go back to Mexico in August, fondly talking about coming back again the following Summer when the farmer needed them again.
This was my first exposure to migrant labor. It was clear the farmer took the appropriate steps to get visas and paid the family well for their efforts. Likewise, the family was thankful for the work, good pay and with the relationship.
When I moved back to Minnesota after college, I started playing hockey again and two of my teammates had done something similar and worked on poultry and cattle farms in the southern part of the state. Their stories were the complete opposite of what I had experienced. Illegals were used all over the operation. They were paid roughly $3/hour cash to work 12-16 hour shifts. If they spoke up about safety issues or the pay, a supervisor would pick them up, buy them a ticket back to the border and drop them off at the bus station.
The stories they had were pretty eye opening to say the least. I felt dumb for being so naive to think farmers just did everything legally.
The majority of the bills are written by lobbyists. Most of the bills introduced are so called "copycat" bills.
USA TODAY and the Republic found at least 10,000 bills almost entirely copied from model legislation were introduced nationwide in the past eight years, and more than 2,100 of those bills were signed into law.
Special interests sometimes work to create the illusion of expert endorsements, public consensus or grassroots support. One man testified as an expert in 13 states to support a bill that makes it more difficult to sue for asbestos exposure. In several states, lawmakers weren’t told that he was a member of the organization that wrote the model legislation on behalf of the asbestos industry, the American Legislative Exchange Council.
ALex Jones was talking about Epstein during the Clinton years and all these flights powerful people were taking to his island. It was an open secret Epstein had a thing for young women so naturally Jones start inferring that Clinton and others were pedos.
Everybody labeled him a kook at the time, mainly because this was just one of the many outlandish theories he had on the Free Masons and Illuminati.
Alex Jones has a credibility problem. While he has used thinktank & other quasi-governmental institutions's papers to find nuggets of information he contaminates that with "interdimensional beings" blah... So yeah, frogs's hormones were out of whack and he predicted aspects of 9-1-1, government spying on citizens and some other things, he also has whoppers like sandyhook.
Even kooks (and Alex Jones is a kook) can be right sometimes. But that doesn't make them right anywhere near all the time, and it doesn't make them worth paying any attention to, ever - the things they're right about will generally be discussed, and more rationally, elsewhere too.
I still have a smartphone, but I barely have any apps on it. I literally have a handful of email apps and two weather apps and that's it.
So yeah, I have a smartphone, but I barely use it compared to how I used to use it even 5 years ago. By unplugging, I've found myself way more productive. I'm reading two or three books a month now. Its an amazing feeling knowing you can drive what you want to do instead of having social media driving your life, manipulating you into using it more and more and not feeling like you're in control.
I've essentially logged off and I really don't miss it. I feel like I can't be the only one.
You're not, but you're also not the majority. I'm continually surprised that people are still on Facebook. I get why they use Facebook Messenger, or Facebook Marketplace, but the actual Facebook "news" feed? Have you seen that, it's ads or ads disguised as content... How the hell that thing isn't dead i beyond me.
These are insanely popular in the US too. And I can verify that most of the guys I play with own one. They say their kids teams travel with four or five so the kids get their skates tuned before every game.
I've had the same experience with dog hair and our Dyson Animal vacuum. We've had it repaired twice. Once for the hose, the other for something in the motor that went awry. Even the people at the repair shop said they're worth repairing since their performance stays consistent for so long. It was a couple hundred bucks total for both repairs to get another 7 years out of it? 100% worth it.
Still have that purple and grey beast. Best vacuum by a mile and still going.
Just for reference:
8 U.S. Code § 1325 - Improper entry by alien
Improper time or place; avoidance of examination or inspection; misrepresentation and concealment of facts
Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.