What the meaning of "illegal" is

What the meaning of "illegal" is

by digby

I keep hearing Trump go on and on about "getting all the bad people out" and he's not always explicit that these are "bad" undocumented workers. In fact, when he's talking about the gang members he plans to deport it's not at all clear that he's talking about non-citizens.

I tweeted about this and got this interesting response:

@digby56 has no idea what that is. Just heard some tape https://t.co/USd5aj4tUe where he said 9/11 hijackers were all "illegal aliens"
— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) August 26, 2015


If you watch that video for a few minutes you'll see that he claims the 9/11 hijackers were all in the country illegally and that hordes of middle eastern psychos were coming over the border all the time.

The 9/11 hijackers were not in the country illegally. They had legitimate visas, although in fairness, Trump isn't the only one lying/mistaken on this count. This is a very creepy "misunderstanding" in that it suggest people think that forein=gners in the country on visas are not actually legal.

The point is that I think someone needs to ask The Donald and, by extension, his slavering followers, what they consider to be an "illegal alien" and how they would go about deciding who is and isn't one. Trump often sounds like he just wants to round up people he thinks are "bad" and deport them "so fast it will make your head spin" and I'm not sure he's too picky about the paperwork.

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