Immigrant/Healthcare Debate is a Red Herring

It's just not a substantive  issue, and I will tell you why.

Before I wonk\nout, though, I gotta say this: It is wrongheaded and thoughtless, and,\nyea, sometimes racist and hateful, to call men, women and children\n\"illegal immigrants.\" Anglo journalists use the term all the time, because it\nis acceptable usage in the Associated Press\nStylebook. The good people at AP are unaware that calling people\n\"illegal immigrants\" hurts and outrages millions of undocumented\nimmigrants and millions of others who care about them. The AP is also evidently\nnot aware that Latino journos have long suggested the term\n\"undocumented immigrant\" be used instead. \"Terms such as illegal alien or\nillegal immigrant can often be used pejoratively in common parlance and can\npack a powerful emotional wallop for those on the receiving end,\" the National Association of Hispanic\nJournalists advised in\n2006. The word \"undocumented\" takes the sting out, is more neutral.  The\nword \"illegal\"  automatically criminalizes and separates 12 million people\nnow living in America.

Or worse.

Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate and Holocaust\nsurvivor, once said \"no human being is illegal.\" He had a reason for saying\nthis, he believed calling people \"illegal\"  was the first of many steps\nthat led to the Holocaust.

And he ought to know.

This said, guess what I'm calling my book, to be published by\nGlobe Pequot Press in 2010?

ILLEGAL.

That's right. It will be so titled because the book tells\ntrue stories of hate, violence, and marginalization in the lives of\nundocumented people hunkering down in Ground Zero for the immigration brawl, my\nhome town, Phoenix.\n ( I speak Spanish. This book has lost nothing in the translation. The\nstories are raw and real. )

So, getting\nback to healthcare...while reporting the book I learned that half\nof the nation's  12 million undocumented people are already insured. The\nother uninsured half, about 6 million people, only cost the nation one half of\none percentage point of our total healthcare expenditures. I learned this from Paul Fronstin,\ndirector of health research at Employee\nBenefit Research Institute in Washington, D.C. This is no radical group; members\ninclude consumer groups, insurance companies, employers, unions, and healthcare\nproviders.

In Arizona, undocumented\npeople are barred from getting publicly funded healthcare unless it's a dire\nemergency. Once immigrants are stabilized, if they're chronically ill with,\nsay, cancer, they're shipped back to their country of origin. I am not lying.\nJust read this story about Joe Arvizu, who was sent back to Mexico to die\nby Catholic nuns.

Ok, so to sum up.

1.  Half of our undocumented population already has\ninsurance. The other half sucks up a whole one-half of one percentage point of\nthe entire healthcare cost of the United States of America. Insuring\nthese folks under a \"public option\" or any other option would not break\nthe bank. So any argument about whether this population will or will not\nbe insured is specious. It's a manufactured  distraction.

2. Calling people \"illegal immigrants\" is wrong. Just stop.

Originally appeared\nin \"White Woman in the Barrio\"