Dictionary

Updated January 14, 2007

By Paul Weiser

We have trouble, in America, with calling things by their right names. Let’s not even address the vexed issue of what black Americans throw fits about if they’re not called, this week - let us, instead, work on a proper word for Hispanic people staying in the United States illegally.

The technically accurate term - “illegal aliens” - is a mouthful (six syllables, for pity’s sake) and their facilitators and other doormat-to-criminals types moan that “no one is illegal.” The current politically-correct terminology - “undocumented worker” - lies many ways at once. They’re not undocumented, they’ve got lots of forged documents, and they’re not workers - they work like slaves (badly, slowly, and unreliably) while they and their concubines and children pig up welfare, emergency medical care and other benefits actual workers can barely afford.

Now, as it happens, I saw a one-word dictionary the other day. It stood in a construction site: an eight-foot plywood box already half-full of junk. On each side were spray-painted two words: “Trash” and “Basura”. What could be clearer?

It’s impolite to call illegal aliens “wetbacks,” though the term is accurate in essence (these are people so new to civilization they don’t know how to behave). Just so with “basura” - these Mexican illegal immigrants are so unacculturated they have to be shown, not just where to put the trash, but that in America we don’t just leave it lie for the rag-pickers: there’s an actual place to put it. What a concept!

So, given that “wetbacks” and “illegals” make liberals vent lying accusations of racism, and “undocumenteds” is a lie of the same order, let’s just call the Hispanic people who have come to America illegally, and remain here illegally and without assimilation “basura.” Then we’ll all know exactly what we’re talking about.


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