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Tweeting “hate has no place here,” The City of New York last week announced residents could be fined up to $250,000 if they use the term illegal alien “with INTENT to demean, humiliate or harass a person.”

The NYC Commission on Human Rights released legal enforcement guidance that defines discrimination on the basis of perceived or actual immigration status. The guidance also stipulates that “harassing or discriminating against someone for their use of another language or their limited English proficiency, and threatening to call ICE on a person based on a discriminatory motive, are considered to be in violation of the law.”

 

 

From a business and commerce standpoint, it is perhaps understandable that New York City would be ultra-protective of the thoughts and feelings of its persons living in or entering the country illegally or without legal permission (as the Associated Press recommends they be described).

According to a 2007 study, more than half of all dishwashers in the city are undocumented, as are a third of all sewing machine operators, painters, cooks, construction laborers, and food preparation workers. The study additionally asserts illegal immigrants have a higher labor force participation rate (70 percent) than either native-born or overall foreign-born residents. For reference, in 2009, the labor force participation rate for black/non-Hispanic residents in New York City was less than 60 percent.

 

In 2006, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg testified before a Senate committee hearing to say the city would literally collapse without its illegal immigrants.

“Although they broke the law by illegally crossing our borders … our city’s economy would be a shell of itself had they not, and it would collapse if they were deported,” he said. “The same holds true for the nation.”

 

So it makes sense that New York is so, so sensitive about its illegal immigrants. But then it’s not so clear why New York is also so sensitive about its transgender population.

 

You might recall in 2016 when the city’s Commission on Human Rights ruled that employers and landlords who intentionally and consistently ignore using pronouns such as “ze/hir” to refer to transgender workers and tenants who request them — may be subject to fines as high as $250,000.
“Gender expression may not be distinctively male or female and may not conform to traditional gender-based stereotypes assigned to specific gender identities,” the city advises.

The city insisted that accidentally misusing a transgender person’s preferred pronoun is not against the law and would not be subject to a fine.

Oh, so if you say “he” or presumably, “illegal alien” accidentally without malice, you wouldn’t be subject to a fine.

 

But the city doesn’t specify how that will be determined.

 

George Orwell’s disturbing futurist book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, imagined a world where people could be punished for “thoughtcrime,” defined as any personal or political thoughts unapproved by the superstate Party of the fictional global nation of Oceania.

 

Are we there yet?

 

 

Nine Line is an American Clothing Company with American made Apparel and Accessories- Veteran Owned and Operated