Er, excuse me, “undocumented citizens.” Because that oxymoron is the latest edition of Newspeak from the open-borders elite who desperately cling to the belief that people want entitlements drained for illegal aliens. Bakari Sellers sent out the memo on this Ministry of Truth terminology change on CNN last night, right after scolding Scott Jennings over a lack of charity toward those who “are picking your peaches,” and then claiming that slavery makes immigration enforcement illegitimate.
“The mask came off,” Jennings noted this morning. I’d argue that a few masks slipped in this clip:
The mask came off live on the air last night.
The official position of Democrats is free health care for ILLEGAL immigrants, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.
Tell your friends. pic.twitter.com/y1ycLINjwR
— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) June 6, 2025
The look on Jennings face says it all when Sellers brings up slavery. It’s clearly a non-sequitur designed to shut Jennings down, who doesn’t take the bait:
SELLERS: Look. First of all, before we go to commercial, what kind — what kind of immigration was I brought here?
JENNINGS: You’re already in the hole. You sure you won’t own a stop, Megan?
SELLERS: Because it was slavery. That’s not immigration.
JENNINGS: Come on. …
SELLERS: Don’t say come on when somebody is like my family was brought here in chains. The answer is not come on.
Yes, “come on” most certainly the hell is the answer. Even Abby Phillips looked a bit embarrassed by this and shut down the topic. Slavery that ended in the 19th century has nothing to do with immigration in the 21st century. To paraphrase the famous philosopher Jules Pitt, that isn’t the same ballpark, it isn’t the same league, and it isn’t even the same sport. (Some words may have been left out. We’re Salem.) Even if Seller’s ancestors were brought here by violence in slavery, Sellers wasn’t, and neither was anyone he knows. Anyone not born here or extradited to the US for prosecution came om their own volition.
If these immigrants obeyed the law to do so and obeyed the law in remaining here, then they should have access to taxpayer-funded benefits. If they broke the law to get in and/or broke the law in remaining here, that makes them illegal aliens — the actual legal term for those in that status — and taxpayers owe them nothing except basic due process in getting removed back to their home countries.
Why? Because there is no such thing as “undocumented citizens.” Sellers tried to sell this one as a shut-down argument too:
JENNINGS: Do you want Medicaid on illegal aliens on or not?
SELLERS: Do I want — first of all, do I want undocumented citizens to have health care?
Citizens of the US always have documentation supporting their status, whether that be birth certificates that prove their birth within our sovereign territory or naturalization documents proving their legal application for citizenship. Anyone “undocumented” in our country is an alien, not a citizen, and almost definitionally illegal. Even asylum seekers have documentation for their status, and legal immigrants either have visas or green cards documenting those statuses.
“Undocumented citizen” is more offensive than just for its self-contradictory and oxymoronic nature, heavy on the ‘moron’. It’s a new effort to shut down debate over real issues in immigration control and entitlement programs by building false equivalences between illegal aliens and actual citizens, not to mention the immigrants who obeyed the laws to enter and work in the US.
Another false argument here, one in use for the last three decades or so, is the equating of “health care” and publicly funded health insurance. Illegal aliens can get medical care in the US without Medicaid. Nothing prevents them from accessing clinics and hospitals, but they will have to pay for it themselves. Instead, Sellers and the rest of this panel want taxpayers footing the bill for people who are already in the US illegally rather than cooperate with the law to enter properly. Why should taxpayers foot that bill at all?
Finally, and somewhat hypocritically given his later use of the slavery issue, Sellers breaks out the peasantry argument:
SELLERS: How about this? How about this? When the people that are — that are picking your peaches –
JENNINGS: So passionate.
SELLERS: Yeah, I’m passionate about Americans.
JENNINGS: Very passionate for the illegals.
SELLERS: No, I’m passionate for Americans.
They aren’t Americans (as discussed above), and so Jennings is correct that Sellers is passionate for illegals. And he’s passionate about illegals primarily because Sellers believes (or argues) that they’re “picking your peaches.” An incredibly small number of illegals actually work in agriculture at all these days, mainly because harvesting has become far more mechanized and automated over the last several decades. It’s an ignorant argument for an ignorant position, based on elitism and bigotry, all of which are masks that come off CNN’s panelists in this segment.
Finally, we have hard data on just how much free access to Medicaid for illegal aliens costs, thanks to Gavin Newsom and California. Even apart from the oxymorons used to argue for this policy, it’s still moronic on the merits.
