Group asks council to drop word `illegal'.

Byline: Nick Kotsopoulos

COLUMN: City Hall Notebook

The City Council has been asked by the Human Rights Commission to sign on to the national "Drop the I-Word" campaign to eliminate the use of the word "illegal" when referring to a person's immigration status from all city documents and replace it with the word "undocumented" instead.

City Manager Michael V. O'Brien said the city stopped using the terms "illegal immigrant" or "illegal alien" in its documents a couple of years ago, but at least one city councilor was still hesitant about having the city act on the resolution.

Councilor-at-Large Konstantina B. Lukes said the request is just another example of the City Council getting involved in national issues that do not fall under its jurisdiction.

She requested that the resolution be referred to the city's Law Department so the council can get clarification on what the city's current policy is and whether what is being asked for goes beyond the powers of the City Council.

"The immigration system in this country is broken, and it's not the job of the Worcester City Council to fix it, nor is it even the job of our state representatives to fix it," Mrs. Lukes said. "This is a national and congressional issue that has been successfully avoided for years.

"This goes beyond the jurisdiction of the City Council," she added. "And, if this is something that is already in place, then the Human Rights Commission had no business raising this again."

Cara Lisa Berg Powers, vice chairman of the Human Rights Commission, said the commission unanimously voted at its Nov. 7 meeting to ask the City Council to sign on to the national "Drop the I-Word" campaign.

She said it was the first Human Rights Commission in the country to make such a request.

Ms. Berg Powers said the use of terms like "illegal immigrant" and "illegal alien" are "dehumanizing, racist, confuse the immigration debate, and are not legally accurate."

She said that nowhere in immigration law does the term illegal immigrant come up. She added that linking immigrants to words like "illegal" denies people their human rights and dignity.

"This is fitting especially given that Worcester is one of 350 cities in the country that takes in refugees from all over the world," Ms. Berg Powers told the City Council. "This is something the city should sign on to. The Human Rights Commission asks the council to adopt this so the city is committed to using accurate and legal wording in our documents."

But...