As you may be well aware, I've gotten stuck with one of those ultra-rare personality types (3 - 5%, a definite minority). I only mention it now because knowing ahead of time that I'm INFJ (Meyers Briggs Type Inventory, look it up) MIGHT help you to 'get' where I'm coming from.
I'm the one going the speed limit when everyone else is zipping along.
I'm the one who thinks proper usage of language matters, unless I'm using a vernacular or there are quote marks involved, as people don't speak in grammatically correct sentences.
I'm the one who picks up on every emotion in the air and feels it, even if it doesn't belong to me.
I'm the one you might not want to lie to. I'll likely let you get away with it, but I'll know.
I'm the one who will walk away from small talk but spend hours on end discussing and exploring topics like the impact of entanglement (quantum physics) on people's everyday lives, or the life cycle of Earth, or the ramifications of history.
I'm the one who gets 'peopled out', can and will work alone, but most of the time (ironically) prefers a strong team (leadership typically pops in crisis situations; otherwise it will likely show up as ideas).
I'm the one who goes with my gut because the times I haven't done so haven't turned out that well.
I'm the one who deliberately seeks out the good, the positive because, unless I do so, the bad, the hateful can and does overwhelm me.
I'm the one who will probably recognize you by 'feel' rather than name or face. I won't remember what you were wearing but will remember what you were feeling.
I'm the one who will seem 'stand-offish' unless there's a good reason to interact; if there's a cause I believe in I'll not quit on it - ever. I'll take a stand on things that seem to be diametrically opposed, and find no conflict between them or inside of myself.
There are lots of other 'characteristics' but you get the general idea.
So when it comes to 'semantics' I understand that referring to something like a sub-group of a larger population is going to vary according to where the speaker is 'coming from'. Generally speaking, as long as the meaning is clear I'm not going to quibble about the word choices of different folk. I fully know that you will likely not understand me but know that I will understand you.
At the moment I'm finding it interesting, and a little puzzling, that people have taken to referring to the exact same sub-group of a larger population in completely different ways, depending on personal beliefs. To me, as the J part of my equation rises (the only one that has any flexibility at all; the INF part is solidly carved into stone - it's 'opposite' is P and the two take turns) and I find myself wanting to make a choice as to whether to go with 'undocumented citizens', 'undocumented immigrants', or 'illegals' - my mind recognizes that the law identifies them as 'illegals' and so that's my choice as it's the only one that makes any sense to me.
Citizens are documented as such; without the documentation they are not citizens. Immigrants likewise. To present this population as either, to me, smacks of deceit. Deceit is right up there at the top of the list of things that I find abominable.
Regarding our DACA folk, which I've done a couple of posts on, the program gave them a DEFERRED time. That time is up as their deferment program comes to an end. Yapping and yiping about it isn't going to change that. The fact that the deferment itself was unconstitutional in the first place, in the J part of my mind, makes the whole thing wrong from the get-go.
Ignoring our immigration laws (reprehensible to the J part of my mind) allowed the current situation to develop, and I'm not even going to comment on that as we cannot go back in time to make it not have happened. If we closed our borders right this minute to everyone, we would still have our quota of Mexican immigrants already inside our nation to cover well over 400 years worth of legal migrants from that country. I ain't even kiddin' ya. (there's vernacular phrasing).
To the logical part of my mind, that means IF we allow everyone to stay who is already here, we can accept ZERO more folk from Mexico for the next 400+ years. Going by the overall quota, we wouldn't be able to accept anybody from ANYWHERE until we get this resident population properly legally immigrated.
So there's that part of it. Cut and dried. The alternative would be to locate and evict something like 20 million people who are here illegally. Twenty million is a really big number, they are all illegal, shouldn't be here in the first place, and ought to be sent back to Mexico and points south.
Well.
I cannot, with any of the rest of me, find it in any sense okay to send ANYBODY into the situation that exists south of our border, with the exception of the bad guys of course.
So what are we going to do?
Congress has six months to come up with a solution and good luck to them sez I (another vernacular usage).
Our House and Senate folk have got to be seriously in a quandary. Because the only points of view that they're probably hearing come from the extremes of our political left-right graph, our Senators and Representatives likely (and perhaps correctly) assume they're damned if they do and damned if they don't - either way.
What nobody seems to be taking into consideration is that the further to the left and the right that those extremists go, the more of us there are who flat refuse to have anything to do with either side.
So there's this massive population who (again) isn't being represented AT ALL in Washington except by the (essentially unaffiliated - thoroughly opposed by the democrats of course and the republicans also fought him until they could fight their own people no more) President we elected. And I'll put in a side note here, just because I feel like it: if said President is as smart as I'm convinced he is, he will locate and endorse Independent candidates who DO represent us - and if we're even a fraction as smart we'll see to it that folks who represent us get onto the ballot/s. Let the democrats and the republicans duke it out all they want. Most of us are sick of the both of them, and are hoping President Trump runs as an Independent or SOME other designation (Constitutional would be my preference, if it's not already taken). We've got just over three years to get ourselves pulled together and we aren't particularly all that interested in who is put on the ballot by the democrats or the republicans because we aren't going to vote for them anyhow - we'll re-elect our President with write-in votes if need be.When it comes to a 'color' to represent the in-between folks (who happen to make up the vast majority of us) I wanted white as it is the presence of all the other colors in the spectrum and is the third color in our flag, but unfortunately white carries connotations ... so it would have to be all three I think. Doing that would include the 'blue' folk and the 'red' folk, as well as all the rest of us. Now to think of a symbol. Do we want an animal, like the donkey and the elephant, or simply the American Flag? If an animal, I'm almost certain the Bald Eagle would be appropriate. While the donkey and the elephant are fighting, the eagle flies away with the votes. Yep. (colloquialism)
Back to topic.
My point here is that, as far as I can tell, almost all of 'the rest of us' who aren't at either end of the extremes mainly want a clear end to the immigration issue. Close and lock the borders while we get things sorted out. No it's not fair to those who legitimately want to come but we're so far over our reasonable quotas right now that there's no way that I can see to justify any more until further notice. The loud-mouths on both ends can yipe and gripe all they want. If it came down to a referendum, I'm betting we would say, 'Okay, they're here. We're used to them and they're used to us. Let the law-abiding ones stay as long as they remain law-abiding, deport the bad guys and anyone else who commits a felony in the next five or ten years, and no more at all until we've caught up to ourselves.' Period.
Frankly, humanitarianism aside, it boils down to (for me) laying to rest the semantics of the whole thing. No more need to figure out how you're going to refer to these 20+ million people who live among us. There will be nobody calling them 'undocumented citizens' or 'undocumented immigrants' or 'illegals', which are all trigger words to the opposite sides. They will be, simply, Americans just like the rest of us.
As an INFJ I'm the one who is all about conflict avoidance.
I'm the one who wants balance.
I'm the one who so very firmly believes in Justice for All. And Mercy. And, ultimately, Peace.
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