Has the First Amendment lost its value in New York City?

The New York City Commission on Human Rights recently released new legal enforcement guidelines that ban the use of the term “illegal alien” by employees, housing providers (including hotels) and law enforcement as “discriminatory,” and violators can be punished with exorbitant and punitive fines up to $250,000 per offense.

In other words, the city will now censor and penalize anyone for using the correct legal term that has been used in both federal immigration law and numerous court decision, including by the Supreme Court.

Open border advocates (sounds political to me) and pro-illegal groups have been waging a propaganda war for years to convince media outlets and government officials to abandon the term “illegal alien.”

They want it replaced with a euphemism, the term “undocumented immigrant,” to disguise and hide the unlawful conduct of aliens who break our immigration laws and enter this country illegally.

Let's look at the facts here…“undocumented immigrant” is merely a made-up term that ignores the law.

“Illegal alien” is the correct legal term and we are not being offensive when you use precise legal terminology.

This action by NYC is so far outside the bounds of what it can legally do and is purely a violation of the First Amendment.

Under federal law, any individual in this country who is not a citizen is an alien and any alien who is here without permission is here illegally…and this should be the end of the story, but, it is not in NYC.

An interesting scenario would be a Sullivan County police officer having to go to New York City to arrest what he might refer to as an “illegal alien”…can you imagine this officer being fined $250,000?

Ed Townsend provides year around "Beyond The News"coverage in this column with over 60-years of photojournalism analysis and insight. The column can also be read on his Web blog at http://bght.blogspot.com