I am a sometimes viewer of Outnumbered on Fox News Channel (noon East Coast, 9 AM here in AZ where we bitterly cling).  Not nearly as good as The Five, but occasionally entertaining.

Geraldo Rivera, who hit his peak during the OJ Simpson trial and has declined since, is a staunch defender of open borders and amnesty.  Yesterday on the show (which features four lovely ladies and one outnumbered man, hence the title), he was blathering about the current border brouhaha.   In one of his usual nonsensical immigration rants he claimed, pulling on his “lawyer” hat (I do not believe he ever practiced, although I believe he did pass some state’s bar exam, too lazy to look up), “Don’t call them illegal, that requires a judicial determination.  (I’m quoting from memory here.)

Sorry, Geraldo.  That’s about as accurate a statement as “There’s amazing loot in Al Capone’s vault!”

A person violates a statute when they violate the statute.  They have committed the violation; they have done something illegal (think “You made an illegal right turn”).  Commission of the crime is different than being convicted of the crime, which happens before a judge or magistrate.  A bank robber is still a bank robber even if they are never caught, tried and convicted.  A person is not illegally in the country just because they have not been caught, appeared before a judge, and been convicted of, for example, 8 U.S.C. § 1325.  They are illegally in the country because they have avoided examination or inspection and entered the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers.  They are illegal aliens, illegal immigrants.  They are not undocumented immigrants, concerned parents from depressed countries, wretched refuse yearning to breathe free, or whatever.  Emma Lazarus was writing about legal immigrants, who passed inspection, waited in line, filled out paperwork, and many of whom were actually sent back to where they came from and never set foot on U.S. soil past Ellis Island.

So wrong. Geraldo.  Yet again.  But said with such conviction!