So? Since when does wide usage mean correct usage? Is it quibbling to point out that they are not using a correct term?
It is the same as people saying the US is a "democracy". It isn't and I will correct people when they say it.
An immigrant has a certain legal status. Therefore it is impossible for a immigrant to be illegal. It is like saying illegal citizen.
I intend to push this humpty-dumpty off his wall every chance I get. Words mean what they mean. Not what the media says they mean.
You let them define the verbiage and you let them define the argument. You let them define the argument and you have already lost.
But, the phrase immigrant, emigrant, illegal alien, and undocumented worker are so misused by so many different people for reasons of both ignorance and political correctness -- I think you've lost the battle before you even start.
I watch this forum often and see people use there, their and they're interchangeably and incorrectly, there's no way I can correct all of them, I don't even try.
I'm tired too of folks not understanding the difference between imply and infer nor anxious and eager.
Or folks who don't understand saying general consensus is as redundant as saying yellow jaundice.
And irregardless just stands my hair straight up, when people mean irrespective or regardless.
and on and on and on.
You've got some agenda here and you're quibbling basically about what is is.
There was a long thread about a week ago here on FR when the press would not classify correctly the immigration status of 29 illegal alien felons in New York. I don't know why the media doesn't do it -- PC I guess.
But, misrepresentation of someone's legal immigration status in the press is so common, that no one can hang their hat on such finite language one way or the other.
And, no more than me, you don't know the legal immigration status of this Indian family in Roanoke, Virginia.
But, my guess is as good as yours.
And, I think its worth checking their status.