There's a Word for This, but We Don't Use It Often Enough

   If you dislike gay people, you are a homophobic. If you deny women equal opportunity, you are a sexist. If you mistreat Black people or Hispanics or Chinese, you are a racist.

   So what if you discriminate against or have ill feelings for those who are crossing our southern border, or those who are homeless on the streets of our cities? These don't even get a name. Perhaps society does not recognize the bias against them. You don't give a name to a bigot unless he is a bigot; if you can't clean the cloud from your eyes enough to see that you are being unfair to the immigrants, you won't give the condition a name.

   Immigrants arrive under the stigma of being criminals, and of coming just to take advantage of our welfare, and of overcrowding our society, and of lowering the wages and of taking jobs away from us. They do not deserve equality, according to those who hold ill feelings toward them. Why would you reward someone who is breaking the law by coming here? No, they are not to receive equality. Would we give equality to a criminal who belongs in a tight prison cell? 

   And, the homeless are all a bunch of panhandlers and drug addicts, right?

   One of the marks of discriminating, is the assigning of faults to all the people in the group, classing them altogether, faulting them all. The immigrants certainly suffer that treatment. The one who crosses the border is judged by the one who came before him. If one of them came and ended up killing someone in America, then everyone who crosses the border is also a criminal. If one of them is a drug smuggler, they all should be punished by preventing them from coming. 

   And, how about those in poverty? Are they falsely treated and lumped together? Actually, there is a word for the discrimination against them: povertyism. And, if  you hold disgust towards poor people, that is aporophobia. But you never hear either of those terms used. Aporophobia is a big word and we are too small to use it. When we write our laws saying who shall not be discriminated against, we say no one shall be discriminated against on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, or national orgin. Discriminating against the poor is not against the law like it is against the law for other things.

   And, actually there is a word which sometimes is used for discrimination against those who are immigrants. It is called xenophobia. Xenophobia is the rejection of foreigners. It doesn't clearly take in those who arrive without permission (did I just sidestep calling them illegals?) but, the same: those who are averse to undocumented border crossers are sometimes placed in the category of being xenophobiacs (I just made up a word there; xenophobia is a word, but xenophobiac isn't).

   Well, I'm just saying it is just as wrong to marginalize the immigrants and poor as it is to marginalize someone based on their race. Equality for all means what it says, equality for all. It is a principle America was founded upon and should be precious to our hearts, and we should be loath to think that we would ever discriminate against the immigrants and poor.