Does Omar Need an English Lesson?

Nancy Pelosi has suggested that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is not fully responsible for her own statements because she has a “different experience in the use of words.” It’s possible, although Omar has lived in the U.S. since she was 13. In any event, she seemingly does not know the meaning of the word “alien.” She tweeted today in response to President Trump:


Omar is simply wrong: lots of people are aliens. An alien is someone who is not a citizen. An illegal alien, which Trump referred to, is an alien who is present in the country illegally. These are legal terms; see, for example, 8 U.S. Code § 1101 (a) (3) : “The term ‘alien’ means any person not a citizen or national of the United States.”

So Omar is wrong, and President Trump’s use of the word was correct.

There are two possibilities here. One is that Omar is poorly educated and is unfamiliar with the common English word “alien.” That could be. The second possibility is that she, like so many liberals, is trying to bully the rest of us into adopting their vocabulary, even when it does not accord with common usage, common sense, or, as here, the law.

The second interpretation is supported by the remainder of Omar’s tweet. “Family separation,” the bogeyman liberals always resurrect as an insuperable obstacle to law enforcement. “Dehumanizing immigrants,” an idiotic formula that ignores the entire point Trump was making, the difference between legal and illegal immigrants, and that, in any case, makes no sense: why does enforcing the law, as the president is constitutionally required to do, “dehumanize” anyone?

Ilhan Omar: is she an ill-educated naif, as Nancy Pelosi suggested, or a clever demagogue? Or, perhaps, both?

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