Kathleen Carroll Quotes
“Illegal” should describe only an action, not a person.
At the time, many people referred to immigrants who had entered the United States without the proper documentation or by contravening our laws were referred to as “illegals” or “illegal immigrants”. Bank robbers and rapists were never referred to as “illegals”—only immigrants. Carroll and others pointed out that there was no such thing as an “illegal person”—only illegal acts.
Kathleen Carroll, Executive Editor, Associated Press, Quoted in Jake Scobey-Thal,, “Illegal Alien”, Foreign Policy, September / October, 2014
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The illegal alien problem had vexed Republican and Democratic Administrations for over 50 years and is one of the most complicated of all the problems facing the nation. She offered the voters a simple solution.
The words “illegal alien” are crude and needlessly harsh. There are people who are in American illegally, but the people are not illegal. There is no such term in United States law as “illegal alien”. See {640788}.
The quote is often misreported as “I am, you know, adamantly against illegal illegal immigration."
JOUAM was a nativist workingmen's organization founded in 1853 to resist the competition for jobs from immigration. See related quote for membership criteria. At its peak it had over 200,000 members. “Mechanics” was the term used for a wide variety of skilled craftsmen from plumbers to bricklayers. JOUAM is the oldest fraternal order in America.
For every illegal immigrant working in the United States, there is at least one company or individual who is also breaking the law by employing him/her.
At that time the Republicans had adopted a political strategy of not passing any significant legislation so that they could claim the Democratic President Barack Obama could not lead or do anything. They were committed to limiting Obama to one term. The Republicans controlled the House and had enough Senators to filibuster anything that happened in the Senate. During that period, there was hardly any legislation passed—one of the lowest points of Congressional paralysis and partisanship in American history.
The Governor had sent the Federal Government a bill for $118 million to cover the cost of medical, educational, and other social services for illegal aliens.
The issue of admission of relatives of citizens had, in the 20th century, become controversial as some political forces worked to restrict immigration. The result of politicizing this issue was that the relatives who would receive immigration priorities would change every time Congress legislated about anything involving immigration and asylum. Immigrants from some countries could have their aunts and uncles get priority while other countries it was only siblings, children and parents. And still others would be children only. There was also racial and ethnic discrimination in that nations with white populations received a broader right to have relatives immigrate than non-white.
