NYC City bans calling someone an ‘illegal alien’ out of hate
This news article, titled NYC City bans calling someone an ‘illegal alien’ out of hate, was written by Rich Calder, Julia Marsh and Aaron Feis and published on September 26, 2019 in the New York Post. It reports a new law in New York City that bans people from calling others “illegal aliens” and calling immigration authorities (ICE) to report people when motivated through “hate” and discriminatory motives. The article announces the new law and provides a couple of real life example situations.
Students can discuss if they believe this law should expand beyond NYC to state and national levels and predict what the outcome would be if that happens. The news article can be supplemented with additional materials when teaching an ESL lesson:
- The 29-page directive mentioned in the article can be provided. The “Legal Enforcement Guidance on Discrimination on the Basis of Immigration Status and National Origin,” released by City Hall Commission on Human Rights might be overwhelming for students, but only taking a few sections of the document to highlight could reduce student anxiety.
- If the 29-page directive is too challenging, students could read this one-page document titled, “Protections Based on Immigration Status and National Origin” that outlines the document’s key points in more simplified language.
- Additionally, students can read the reactions to the announcement on NYC Twitter post and discuss the comments and backlash that follow the post. The class can discuss the opinions and postulate the reasoning behind the backlash, looking at the different perspectives and motivations.
One thing I discovered while researching these documents was that although the NYC Human Rights website can be accessed in one hundred and four (104) languages, the documents themselves are only provided in English! This is an additional topic that could be discussed with students.
This is a very good post Jeanne. Lots of helpful tips! I like that you noticed the disparity between the number of languages on the webpage and that the reports are only in English. I guess they assume that if you’re a NewYorker you should speak English? They don’t even have it in Spanish?
Great post, Jeanne! $250,000 per offense – wow – that’s a pretty strong deterrent against racism! I think the 29-pager would be an awesome for an EAP course maybe for lawyers studying English? The one-pager is super helpful. It would be cool to have students read this document, consider the policies in their own country concerning human rights policies, and carry out a compare/contrast activity – comparing the policies against one another.
This concept would also make for a rich situational role play or even just a conversation concerning how bystanders can react in situations where someone is being blatantly discriminated against. We could give students the tools to stand up for each other, and have them study the language of respectfully disagreeing. The article would be a cool schema activation activity or even a lesson beforehand (depending on how extensive the lesson you create around the article is). Nice work Jeanne! Thanks for the tool! I’m inspired by this article now!
I really like this. Honestly, I think it would be good to raise this issue in a class by presenting this article because students who come from ethnically homogeneous countries—or countries where racism is more socially accepted—may partake in such behaviors themselves and not realize why they’re wrong. Presenting this article as part of a discussion of taunting based on race or ethnicity might be a good way to help students understand the discussion around such issues. If you were going that route, it might be good to present accounts written by people who have experienced someone making fun of their race or ethnicity or language, since students who haven’t been exposed to these discussions before may not realize why people get so bothered when someone tells them to speak English, etc.
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