When President Joe Biden delivered his final State of the Union address before the election, which I described as a not so state of the union in a recent blog post, Laken Riley's name, a 22 year-old Georgia nursing student who was killed by an illegal immigrant, was brought up.
In Biden's speech he referred to her killer, Jose Antonia Ibarra as, "an illegal."
Of course, that drew some attention from certain corners of the liberal media since liberals had decided long ago to ditch the term "illegal" and to instead use the term "undocumented." Of course, more often than not, these days, simply the term "migrant" is being used.
The word was the correct word to use. But of course, in using the term "illegal," in a back ended sort of way, it seems to want to imply something is wrong with the situation we have on our border. Something that the Biden administration has long contended is "under control" and not an issue until only recently, after receiving throngs of backlash from governors and mayors in his own party who are experiencing the issues illegal immigration poses firsthand.
According to Biden and his administration, it was a bit of a slip of the tongue. As he told MSNBC's Jonathan Capehart in an interview after Biden delivered his address, "I shouldn't have used the word illegal. It's undocumented."
Many saw his comments as an apology, and I think rightly so. But his administration was quick to run out and insist it was not an apology at all. When Olivia Dalton, the White House Deputy Press Secretary, was asked about her thoughts she said, "Regretting something doesn't equate to an apology."
I can agree with her statement to an extent. However, it was what Biden went on to say in expanding on his answer that suggested that it was, in fact, an apology. He was quick to point out that he disagrees with Trump's opinion of illegal immigrants, "The way he talks about vermin, the way he talks about them polluting the blood."
And yet the very man Donald Trump has talked about are men like Jose Antonio Ibarra who aren't supposed to be here, and had he not been, Laken Riley would be alive today.
The American people, regardless of their political affiliations, should be astonished that Biden was so quick to defend his use of a word rather than address the real issue at hand. The tragic end of Laken Riley's life at the hands of an illegal immigrant. Because tragedies like this are the very reason having a secure border is so important—among many reasons. And it's not to say murders happen only because of open borders, of course. But at least in the case of this murder, it is one that could mostly have been avoided.
But it goes back to words and how they are used. Why is it felt, by the left, that it is needed to soften the language we use?
As Fox News' Jesse Waters said on The Five recently, "You don't say a gun is undocumented. The gun's illegal. You don't say someone committed a nonconsensual sex act. You call it rape. You don't say Russia is expanding their borders. You say Russia invaded. You use precise language for a reason, and they are trying to pull the illegality out of border crossing because they want to take the sting out of it."
He further argued that they change the word because they (the Democrats, and Biden in particular) are complicit in it.
It's their border through their policies which made it possible for Jose Antonio Ibarra to be in the country to kill Laken Riley, and that's the point Waters was making and part of the point I made earlier. We have a problem, it has gotten worse, Trump's argument has become a headline in the Georgia murder story, and they simply don't want to admit it's a problem.
Of course, changing the language we use doesn't negate the facts of what happened and under what circumstance it happened. But it does let us know where the priorities lie.
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MORE READING:
Illegal Aliens, Muslims, and the P.C. Police Who Love Them (From June 2010)
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