Will media ever explain the meaning of 'anti-immigration'?

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
 - George Orwell, 1984

For many years, certain members of the media who cover immigration either as opinion writers or reporters have without challenge from their equally shallow editors been permitted to falsely label as "anti-immigrant" or "anti-immigration" supporters of immigration law enforcement and reducing legal immigration to levels that benefit all of society.

I have on a number of occasions queried journalists who throw around such descriptors without any thought of their consequences, asking them for examples of behavior that lend substance to what amounts to demonizing rule of law advocates and others who American workers protected from the continuing onslaught of cheap foreign labor.

Their answer thus far is the same as what I was given a few years ago when I asked to see news stories about Americans who lost their jobs because of an E-Verify system supposedly "riddled with errors":

Crickets

I love trying to get into the heads of immigration reporters because there is so much room in them in which to romp around, always being careful not to knock over any of the road signs that warn:  "Critical thinking strictly prohibited."

A few years ago, when the media were keen about blaming "harsh rhetoric" for the Republican Party's defeat in the 2012 election, I posed the same question about the use of that term.  I got lucky that time when a reporter offered that "calling for strict enforcement" of our immigration laws certainly qualifies as harsh rhetoric.

Using that reporter's view of the world, then, can it be safely said that anyone who advocates for putting American workers before illegal aliens and protecting our sovereignty, opposing amnesty and reducing legal immigration to sustainable levels, etc., must be anti-immigrant and anti-immigration?

If so, then it also must follow that a couple who decide not to have any more children must be "anti-child."

Orwell certainly was on to something.

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Dave Gorak is Executive Director of Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration. He spent nearly 30 years as a Chicago print journalist.