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Dorchester murder victim was undocumented Irish immigrant
By adamg on Tue, 10/11/2011 - 4:24pm
Boston Police identified the victim of a murder on Nahant Avenue Monday morning as Ciaran Conneely, 36, who moved to Dorchester from County Galway, Ireland.
His murder came only hours after the end of the annual Irish festival in nearby Adams Corner.
The Irish Emmigrant reports that Conneely was originally from Inis Meáin in the Aran Islands, was known as "Kiwi," and had spent the past 10 years in Boston, working in construction. Breakingnews.ie reports Conneely was in the US illegally.
The Emmigrant reports Conneely had been violently attacked within the past few weeks and said his brother died in 2000 when a freak wave swept him off a pier he was standing on.
Following his funeral, his body will be returned to Ireland for burial.
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Comments
I used to work with a woman
I used to work with a woman whose boyfriend was an illegal Irish immigrant working in construction. Hope it's not the same guy
so if the skincolor is brown
so if the skincolor is brown they are "illegal;" if white they are "undocumented?"
Condolences to the family and RIP, this shouldn't happen no matter what it's called.
Come On
Don't take your frustrations with in-the-tank media like the Herald out on Adam, who's about as far from that "illegals are murdering us one by one" nonsense as you can get.
huh?
huh?
It shouldn't have happened
It shouldn't have happened because he long ago should have been deported back to Ireland.
Nope.
No.
remove this comment please
remove this comment please his immigration status should not matter it is a whole different issue
Where did you get the info
on his skin color? There's no photo or anything in any of those links.
i got the info very locally
i got the info very locally
probably just assumed based
probably just assumed based on demography..... 1% of Irish population is black. If I hear about an Irish person I picture the the whitest of white person. As assumptions go, it's a pretty safe one.
Picture a tiger. Is it orange? Only 94% of tigers are orange.
The other 6%
True, the other 6% of tigers are their black stripes.
haha, in that case it's more
haha, in that case it's more like 60/40 i'm guessing.
But out of +/- 3200 tigers left in the wild, 200 are white
paperless
Actually Adam is just using what is considered the journalistic proper form. Not sure if it's actually in the AP style guide, but I know both NPR and usually AP will make a point of using both "illegal" and "undocumented" in their stories so that they can't be accused of taking sides or "being biased." It's the fair and balanced paradigm of giving equal time to both sides of an argument.
So in that interest I would prefer if we could refer to Italian-Americans as both that term and "Wops." And personally I've always preferred "Coloreds" over "African-American." And "Kike" has a nice poppy quality to properly balance "Jew." Point being, referring to a person as an "illegal" is dehumanizing and insulting, and frequently racist (but not always, someone here posted that this "illegal" in question should have been deported, but maybe he's just old-school, y'know, "No Irish need apply" and all that). Until we refer to everyone who violates any administrative procedures and laws as an "illegal" being (expired inspection sticker? you're an illegal!, get a load of all those illegals in Dewey Square, improperly fill out your taxes?, sorry but you're illegal), I can see no justification of its use in the case of (more often than not) non-white immigrants with invalid, expired or no immigration paperwork.
Illegal Alien is a proper term even used in IRS documents
See here:
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/...
"Although the immigration laws of the United States refer to aliens as immigrants, nonimmigrants, and undocumented (illegal) aliens, the tax laws of the United States refer only to RESIDENT and NONRESIDENT ALIENS."
An Alien that has entered the US without going through the proper legal channels of immigration, is in the country illegally, thus the designation of Illegal Alien vs. Resident or Non-Resident Alien.
It may have recently become a slur of sorts, but hardly the type of the examples you provide above. Just because you don't like the term doesn't mean it's not proper.
I'm agnostic on the immigration issue, but to paint someone using the term "Illegal Alien" as racist in the same manner as someone using "Kike" is ridiculous.
I sure didn't mean to imply
I sure didn't mean to imply Adam is racist, and in reading the original sources now it may just be a case of cultural differences: perhaps Irish press commonly uses one term and not the other.
But I do find it interesting that we have different terms for this, with deeply different connotations:
undocumented ("oops, I forgot to sign in, I'll go see the hall monitor and take care of that in a jiffy")
vs.
illegal ("I am here to steal your car, sell drugs to your children, and live off your dime")
It's not the only example of media word choices that may reflect an unconscious bias--don't even get me started on "insurgents" and "combatants" instead of "rebels." When Hollywood glorified rebelling, the military press office had to find some new propaganda.
I gotta run, I just saw a black helicopter circling overhead...
Adam's not a dick
No, I wasn't implying that Adam was or wasn't an migraphobe, just that he used the undocumented/illegal descriptors as the mainstream media has been. My point is that it is not an unbiased use any more than using a racial/ethnic pejorative would be. And although the term "illegal alien" may have been recently codified by the IRS, that doesn't mean a hell of a lot. Language responds to use. News outlets like Fox have made certain terms buzzwords/codes/links to larger, implied meanings.
"Alien" started getting used by the things like the "Alien and Seditions Act" back in the late 18th century and implies a threat. More recently the threat might be from another planet - although I'm pretty sure Mexicans don't have acid blood or brood their young in people's chest cavities. Many people who are "undocumented" originally came in with the proper documentation that then expired (worker, student and tourist visas), so not all cases of "undocumented immigrants" are a case of someone "sneaking in."
Combining "illegal" and "alien" (or with immigrant) clearly implies a threat from the "other" and also serves to criminalizes the person rather than the actual act of illegally entering or residing in the United States without federal documents -- which by the way is a civil violation, not a crime. But by making this "outsider" and "threat" into a criminal being, we've reaffirmed their dangerousness and the need to treat them as less than human for our own safety.
A friend of mine would talk about the "illegals" cutting grass for the landscapers but then talk about the "undocumented" waitstaff at a local bar. One case was a Guatemalan and the other was Irish. Can you guess which one was which?
black, white, illegal, undocumented
whats the difference, he was murdered. he didnt kill anyone and it sounds like he had a job.
agreed
he was a good kid. and you know what, even if he didn't have a job he still shouldn't have this happen to him.
agreedˆ2
Shouldn't happen to anyone, period
Condolences to the family and friends.