Illegal

One bit of news today is that the Associated Press stylebook has condemned the phrases "illegal immigrant" and "undocumented immigrant." This is part of the general campaign to stop referring to those who have committed illegal immigration, and are currently living in the country illegally, as "illegals." The obviously-correct idea is that a person isn't illegal, an act is. Okay, fine, I'm not generally one to gripe about political correctness, and I do think that "illegals" is offensive. But quite aside from the lack of any remotely concise way to refer to, you know, illegal immigrants after this style change, I'm not sure it follows logically from the central valid criticism. To me, "illegal immigrant" is, on a pure linguistic level, equivalent to "one who immigrates illegally." Right? The "illegal" is modifying the action of immigration, which is concealed by the fact that the whole thing has been turned into a noun by replacing -ation with -ant. Given how much of a set phrase "illegal immigration" is, I honestly think that's how the related phrase "illegal immigrant" reads: it's the noun form of what is essentially a single word that happens to have a space in the middle. Alternately, one can say that "immigrant" refers to a person in their capacity as one who immigrates. While it is definitely true that a person's existence is not illegal (unless they've been sentenced to death, perhaps, but that's a whole separate issue), it makes sense to me to say that, if I take a person who has committed illegal immigration, their existence as an immigrant is illegal. Thus, illegal immigrant: one who is an immigrant illegally.

Now, that's some seriously involved semantics, and if the way it plays out in general society is that people hear "illegal immigrant" as having a similar connotation to "illegals," then we might as well stop saying it. But I don't think it has the same implication; whereas one delegitimizes a person altogether, the other only refers to the illegitimacy of one facet of their existence, that of being an immigrant.