OPINION:
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand went on “The View” on ABC and told the watching world that the phrase “chain migration” was a “racist slur.”
It’s not a racist slur. It’s a couple of words that describe an immigration reality. Saying “chain migration” is racist is akin to calling “educational tool” discriminatory, or “scientific theory” misogynist. It is what it is.
The United Nations has tried the same with the phrase “illegal immigrant” for years, pushing instead the idea that no person can possibly be illegal — that illegals are actually Undocumented. The left has picked up that mantra and run with it.
Now comes Gillibrand with the next Democratic war on words.
This is a time for sane minds to fight. There’s just not anything wrong with using the proper words to describe the acts they were intended to describe. That’s called Definition.
Here’s Gillibrand, though, as noted by Breitbart: “I think a lot of President Trump’s rhetoric is racist. When someone uses the phrase chained migration, it is intentional in trying to demonize, literally trying to demonize families and make it a racist slur. It is not right. We have to change the debate. These are people. These are families.”
Yes — these are people and families who’ve used America’s chain migration process to come to the country illegally.
Again, that’s the definition.
Gillibrand made the remarks in context of discussing House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s recent reference to Trump’s immigration plan as a path toward U.S. whiteness — as a means of making America white again. Pelosi — another Democrat who loves to convolute the immigration debate with racy rhetoric and deceptive terminology that panders to her base of anti-Trumpers.
But Gillibrand’s remarks are worse. Why? Because Pelosi’s comments, while vicious, are obviously off-the-rocker, so to speak. Gillibrand probably half-believes her own remarks — and that means she’ll continue to sell them to an emotion-drive Democratic Party.
“We have to change the debate,” she said.
And she’s going to do it by changing the language so that even uttering the proper immigration control phrases comes across as racist. Clamp the debate; win the policy. Shutter the rationale discourse; push the emotion-filled rhetoric. This is the Democratic way, warring against words because they can’t deal with facts.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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