Gov. Moonbeam just signed a bill to strike the word “alien” from California’s labor laws:

California Bans ‘Alien’ from Labor Code

How Orwellian of him:

This is not an effort to be more “sensitive.” It goes deeper. As Tim Paulson, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, told SF Gate:

There are two words we are opposed to: illegal and alien. There is no such thing as an illegal person, and there is no such thing as an illegal alien. All workers in this country, whether documented or undocumented, pay their taxes and do their fair share. We are a nation of immigrants, and anything that connotes a negative implication of being an immigrant is antithetical to the idea of the American dream.

This is a contemptible program. By refusing to draw any distinction between legal and illegal immigration, Paulson makes obvious that he is not trying merely trying to eliminate a disagreeable word, but to eliminate a concept — the concept of illegal immigration. And the quickest way to eliminate the offensive concept is to eliminate any language in which to express the idea.