Beware of euphemisms.

1. As the numbers of those crossing the southern border grew and the power of those invested in expanded immigration — employers, identity-politics activists, Democratic operatives, the Mexican government — peaked, even more euphemisms emerged to downplay illegality.
2. If “alien,” a Latinate word deriving from the idea of “other” or “different,” sounds too outer space-like, why not substitute “immigrant”? Yet “illegal immigrant” still sounded as if breaking federal immigration laws was somehow a serious legal matter.
3. Unlike affirmative action, diversity meant that approximately 30 percent of the country — in theory, more than 100 million Americans — were suffering as aggrieved minorities, regardless of income or class.
4. Diversity meant that it was no longer incumbent upon job or college applicants to claim historical grievances or prove that they were still victims of ongoing and demonstrable discrimination from the white-majority population.
5. By the late 1960s, slavery, Jim Crow and institutionalized segregation were finally considered unique stains on the American past, to be redeemed in the present by set-aside programs in college admissions and hiring predicated on racial considerations.
6. In a viral exchange at a congressional hearing last week, the new congresswoman from Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, who is quickly establishing herself as the most reprehensible member of the House Democratic freshman class despite stiff competition, launched into Elliott Abrams.
7. But when the numbers of those who fit the old classification grew, and the number of people invested in relaxed immigration policies expanded across the political spectrum, the term gradually metamorphosed.
8. Increasingly we now hear just “migrants” — a vague term that further divorces illegal immigration from reality by conflating the acts of leaving and entering the country.
9. On January 29, tabloid news site TMZ broke the shocking story that Jussie Smollett, a gay black entertainer and progressive activist, had been viciously attacked in Chicago.
10. Diversity also meant that members of any group that declared itself nonwhite — from Arab-Americans to Chilean-Americans — were eligible for advantages in hiring and college admissions.
11. The problem with affirmative action is that the very name implied redress for historical wrongs that could be “affirmed” by compensatory action for a particular minority of the population.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/euphemisms-change-political-debate-climate-immigration/