What I found most interesting about Esmeralda’s talk last Wednesday was the discussion on how the language used to describe DREAMers– youth who grew up in the US and who identify as American despite being completely undocumented– forms our opinions on the group. Esmeralda first identified some problematic wording: one statement described the youth has having been brought to the U.S. “by no fault of their own.” While this emphasis on guilt does induce some level of sympathy for the youth, it also blames their parents for bringing them to the U.S. This raises the question: can their parents be blamed for trying to create a better life for there children? Most would say no, but the language surrounding the DREAM Act did in fact imply the opposite. Another interesting dichotomy is that between illegal and undocumented: while “illegal” implies a clear wrongdoing, “undocumented” has an ambiguous quality that does not assign blame. The issue here as perhaps as linguistic as it is political; it is always enlightening to consider the very words that make up our debates.