Dictionary redefines ‘anchor baby’ as slur

Published on Sun, Dec 11, 2011

What does a tenure “anchor baby” mean? If we were to demeanour it up
in a American Heritage Dictionary, we would find a new
definition given final week.

The tenure was among some 10,000 new difference and phrases in the
fifth book of a dictionary, published in November. It was
defined as: “A child innate to a noncitizen mom in a nation that
grants involuntary citizenship to children innate on a soil,
especially such a child innate to relatives seeking to secure eventual
citizenship for themselves and mostly other members of their
family.”

But when Steve Kleinedler, a executive editor of the
dictionary, review that clarification during a radio talk last
month, it uneasy Mary Giovagnoli, a executive of a Immigration
Policy Center, a pro-immigration investigate organisation in Washington.

The once-obscure tenure has been used frequently in a recent
debate over either to change a Constitution to repudiate automatic
U.S. citizenship to children innate in this nation to illegal
immigrant parents.

Last Friday morning, Giovagnoli posted an indignant object on the
center’s blog, observant a compendium “masks a unwholesome and
derogatory inlet of a term, a tenure that demeans both primogenitor and
child.”

On Monday, a compendium posted a new definition. It started
with “offensive,” in italics: “Used as a adverse tenure for a
child innate to a noncitizen mom in a nation that grants
automatic citizenship to children innate on a soil, generally when
the child’s hearth is suspicion to have been selected in sequence to
improve a mother’s or other relatives’ chances of securing
eventual citizenship.”

Kleinedler said, “The tenure is now treated likewise to how the
dictionary treats a far-reaching operation of slurs.”

Published in the Washington Investment | Read Article