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April 10th, 2025 (Permalink)

Unauthorized Doublespeak

Last month, I discussed an article that used the phrase "immigrant living in the country without legal permission" as a euphemism for the taboo phrase "illegal immigrant". I also noted that the article tried to explain the meaning of the phrase with an alternative euphemism, namely, "unauthorized"1.

A dozen years ago, The New York Times (NYT) announced in its pages a change in its style policy regarding the taboo phrase:

The changes announced by Mr. [Philip B.] Corbett to the stylebook suggested caution when looking for alternatives to "illegal immigrant." "'Unauthorized' is also an acceptable description, though it has a bureaucratic tone," Mr. Corbett said. "'Undocumented' is the term preferred by many immigrants and their advocates, but it has a flavor of euphemism and should be approached with caution outside quotations."2

So, "unauthorized" was a possible replacement for "illegal" twelve years ago, at least in the NYT. Moreover, "undocumented" was already becoming outdated, since good doublespeak doesn't have "a flavor of euphemism", and once people are aware that a word is a euphemism it has lost most of its force. When you hear or use a word that you know is a euphemism, you're immediately reminded of what it is a euphemism for, whereas good doublespeak prevents thinking about taboo topics.

According to Google's Ngram Viewer, the phrase "unauthorized immigrant" was practically non-existent before 1980, its use slowly but steadily rose until around the turn of the century, at which point it surged, peaking in 2016 after which it has declined slightly3. However, "undocumented immigrant" is still ahead in the euphemism sweepstakes, though the use of both phrases plateaued in the last several years4. Interestingly, despite peaking in 2008 and declining afterward5, the taboo phrase "illegal immigrant" still beats both euphemisms6, but this is only in books up to 2022, and perhaps books are a lagging indicator. Nonetheless, it is a small sign that the battle for honest language is not lost.

To finish, I have some suggestions for future doublespeak based on the use of "unauthorized" as a euphemism for "illegal":

  • "thief" = "unauthorized borrower"
  • "kidnapper" = "unauthorized babysitter"
  • "rapist" = "unauthorized sex partner"
  • "murderer" = "unauthorized executioner"

Notes:

  1. 21st Century Doublespeak, Part 3, 3/12/2025.
  2. Christine Haughney, "The Times Shifts on 'Illegal Immigrant,' but Doesn't Ban the Use", The New York Times, 4/23/2013.
  3. "unauthorized immigrant", Google Books Ngram Viewer, accessed: 4/6/2025.
  4. "unauthorized immigrant,undocumented immigrant", Google Books Ngram Viewer, accessed: 4/6/2025.
  5. "illegal immigrant", Google Books Ngram Viewer, accessed: 4/6/2025.
  6. "unauthorized immigrant,undocumented immigrant,illegal immigrant", Google Books Ngram Viewer, accessed: 4/6/2025.
April 5th, 2025 (Permalink)

Pedaling Lies?

In September of 2023, California passed a law raising the state's minimum wage for certain fast food workers to $20 an hour, but it didn't go into effect until just about a year ago, at the beginning of April1. In a statement from his office in August of that year, Governor Gavin Newsom was quoted as saying about the new minimum wage: "Despite those who pedaled lies about how this would doom the industry, California's economy and workers are again proving them wrong.2"

The statement does not identify those who supposedly lied about the new minimum wage, but I doubt that anyone claimed that the raise of a few dollars an hour would actually "doom the industry", so this is an attack upon a straw man3. It's economic common sense that raising the cost of labor is likely to result in fewer employees, fewer hours worked, or higher prices, so some opponents of the raise did argue that it would cause job losses and price increases in fast food restaurants4.

However, the statement from the Governor's office claimed that California had added 11K new fast food jobs since the law had taken effect in April of that year, which is evidence that the job loss criticism was mistaken. Since the possibility of higher fast food prices was not addressed in the statement it is, presumably, lost jobs that the critics "lied" about.

There are two things wrong with the statement, one minor and one major. First, the bad news, then the worse.

  1. Pedaled or Peddled?

    In the quote attributed to the Governor himself, Newsom accuses some unnamed people of having "pedaled lies". The verb "to pedal" means to operate a bicycle, piano or other machine with pedals5. Since lies don't have pedals, "to pedal lies" literally makes no sense and, even figuratively, it's hard to see the point of comparing lies to a bicycle or keyboard instrument.

    In comparison, "to peddle" something means to sell it6, so that the common idiom "peddling lies" means to, at least metaphorically, "sell" lies. Since "pedal" and "peddle" are pronounced identically, it's no surprise that they are sometimes confused. Moreover, "peddle" is perhaps an unfamiliar enough word that people are unsure how to spell it. I suspect that most confusions of "peddle" and "pedal" come from people having heard the idiom "to peddle lies" but never having seen it spelled out, so that "pedal" is mistakenly substituted for "peddle".

    Of the reference books that I usually check, only one lists this pair of words as a confusion to avoid7, so it may not be a very common error, but this is not the first time it's happened. Similarly, out of several free online spelling and grammar checkers I tried, only two suggested replacing "pedaled" with "peddled" in the Governor's sentence. In addition to such programs, I also ran it by GPT-4o mini, which responded:

    The sentence you provided is generally clear, but it could be improved for clarity and flow. Here are a few suggestions:
    1. Punctuation: Consider adding a comma after "workers" for better readability.
    2. Clarity: The phrase "those who pedaled lies" could be rephrased to something like "those who spread misinformation" for a more neutral tone.
    3. Context: Depending on the audience, it might be helpful to specify what "this" refers to, as it could be unclear without additional context.

    Revised example: "Despite those who spread misinformation about how this would doom the industry, California's economy and workers are again proving them wrong."

    Overall, the original sentence conveys its message, but these adjustments could enhance its clarity and professionalism.8

    This is a disappointing answer: the first suggestion is just plain wrong, and not even followed in the revised example. The second suggestion, about clarity, misses the misspelling of "peddled", and I doubt that the Governor would want "a more neutral tone". Finally, the last suggestion is quite correct, but is the result of taking the sentence out of its original context. The revised example corrects the "pedaled" mistake, but appears to have done so by accident.

    Let's turn now to the second and more serious problem with the Governor's statement.

  2. Who Peddled Lies?

    According to the statistics provided in the Governor's statement, which it attributes to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the number of fast food jobs in California increased by 11K in the four months after the wage increase went into effect. However, the BLS has since revised those figures and they currently show an increase of only 2.6K jobs, though it's still an increase9, so the Governor's argument is weakened but not destroyed.

    Four months is a short period of time to judge the effects of such a major change, and it's plausible that it would take longer for the higher wages to lead to layoffs or less hiring. According to the BLS's current figures, in April of last year, the first month during which the higher wage would be in effect, the number of fast food workers in the state was 730K10. By December, the last month for which complete data is available, the number was down to 713.7K. So, according to the very source that the Governor relied on, the number of jobs lost in the fast food industry in the nine months after the new higher minimum wage was adopted, was 16.3K.

    Now, I'm not claiming that all 16K jobs lost were the result of the higher minimum wage, but it's plausible that at least some were. Moreover, the Governor cannot get away with claiming that gaining 11K jobs in the first four months after the raise shows that it did not cost jobs and, at the same time, that 16K fewer jobs after five additional months has nothing to do with the raise.

Update, 4/7/2025: David McRobert e-mailed that he asked Grok about the Governor's sentence, and this was its answer:

Your sentence is clear and mostly well-structured, but there are a few minor adjustments that could improve its flow, precision, and tone. Here are some recommended revisions:

"Pedaled" vs. "Peddled": "Pedaled" refers to riding a bicycle, while "peddled" means to promote or sell (often ideas or goods, sometimes with a negative connotation like hawking falsehoods). It seems "peddled" is the intended word here.

Clarity and Conciseness: The phrase "those who peddled lies about how this would doom the industry" could be tightened for smoother reading.

Tone and Style: Depending on your intent, you might adjust the tone slightly for formality or emphasis.

Here are a few revised versions with explanations:

Option 1 (Minor Fix): "Despite those who peddled lies about how this would doom the industry, California's economy and workers are once again proving them wrong."

Changes: Fixed "pedaled" to "peddled" and added "once" to "again" for a subtle emphasis on repeated resilience. Added a possessive form to "California's" for consistency.

This is an odd claim since it was already possessive in the original.

Option 2 (Tighter and Smoother): "Despite claims that this would doom the industry, California's economy and workers are again proving the naysayers wrong."

Changes: Simplified "those who peddled lies about how this would doom the industry" to "claims that this would doom the industry" for brevity. Replaced "those who peddled lies" with "naysayers" for a less emotionally charged term.

Option 3 (Stronger Emphasis): "Contrary to the lies peddled about this spelling doom for the industry, California's economy and workers continue to prove skeptics wrong."

Changes: Adjusted phrasing to "contrary to the lies peddled" for variety and emphasis. Replaced "are again proving" with "continue to prove" for a sense of ongoing strength. Used "skeptics" instead of "them" for specificity.

Recommendation: Option 1 keeps your original intent intact with minimal changes, fixing only the typo and slight polish. If you want a punchier or more polished version, Option 2 or 3 might suit better. Which vibe are you aiming for―straightforward, concise, or emphatic? Let me know if you'd like further tweaks!

This is a much better answer than the ChatGPT-4o mini one if a bit long-winded, and it catches the misspelling of "peddled", which was the most important thing. It could learn to avoid providing more help than is asked for or needed.

David adds: "I understand that ChatGPT-4o mini is a less capable model, optimised for speed and efficiency and doesn't perform as well as ChatGPT-4, for example (or Grok, I would imagine). (I just checked ChatGPT-4 and it recognised the pedaled mistake.)"

Update, 4/20/2025: Here's the caption of a photograph, in the London Times no less, just a few days ago: "Michelle Zajko accused the media of pedalling lies about the Zizians"1. It's since been silently corrected to "peddling"2, but I saw it before the correction thanks to Ann Althouse, at whose "blog" I found it. She commented: "Imagine riding lies around like they're some kind of bicycle!3"

It's either a coincidence to see another of these confusions so soon after writing the above entry, or this mistake is more common than I thought. If I see one more of these I'm going to assume, in accordance with Goldfinger's principle4, that it's a sign of enemy action.

Notes:

  1. Adam Beam, "New California law raises minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 per hour, among nation's highest", Associated Press, 9/28/2023.
  2. "After raising minimum wage, California has more fast food jobs than ever before", Governor Gavin Newsom, 8/20/2024.
  3. See: Straw Man.
  4. See, for example: Sara Chernikoff, "Fast food chains, workers are bracing for California's minimum wage increase: What to know", USA Today, 3/31/2024.
  5. "Pedal", Cambridge Dictionary, accessed: 4/5/2024.
  6. "Peddle", Cambridge Dictionary, accessed: 4/4/2024.
  7. Bill Bryson, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: a Writer's Guide to Getting it Right (2002).
  8. Private chat with GPT-4o mini, 4/4/2025.
  9. "Databases, Tables & Calculators by Subject", U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, accessed: 4/4/2025. The BLS appears to classify so-called fast food restaurants as "Limited-Service Restaurants and Other Eating Places", which presumably includes some establishments not affected by the new law.
  10. This was the starting month that the Governor's office used in calculating that 11K fast food jobs had been created in the four months that the new wage had been in effect.

Notes to Update:

  1. Andrea Blanco, "Alleged Zizian 'cult' member: We are not Satan's lapdogs", The Times, 4/16/2025. This is an archived copy of the page which has since been corrected.
  2. Andrea Blanco, "Alleged Zizian 'cult' member: We are not Satan's lapdogs", The Times, 4/16/2025. This is the current, corrected page.
  3. Ann Althouse, "'My friends and I are being described as like Satan's lapdogs, the devil and the Manson family all rolled into one.'", Althouse, 4/17/2025.
  4. See the epigraph from Ian Fleming's novel, Goldfinger (1959): "Goldfinger said, 'Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time it's enemy action."'"
Recommended Reading & Listening
March 31st, 2025 (Permalink)

Now It Can Be Told

  • Zeynep Tufekci, "We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives", The New York Times, 3/15/2025
    …[I]n 2020, when people started speculating that a laboratory accident might have been the spark that started the Covid-19 pandemic, they were treated like kooks and cranks. Many public health officials and prominent scientists dismissed the idea as a conspiracy theory, insisting that the virus had emerged from animals in a seafood market in Wuhan, China. … So, the Wuhan research was totally safe and the pandemic was definitely caused by natural transmission: It certainly seemed like consensus.

    We have since learned, however, that to promote the appearance of consensus, some officials and scientists hid or understated crucial facts, misled at least one reporter, orchestrated campaigns of supposedly independent voices and even compared notes about how to hide their communications in order to keep the public from hearing the whole story. And as for that Wuhan laboratory's research, the details that have since emerged show that safety precautions may have been terrifyingly lax.

    Five years after the onset of the Covid pandemic, it's tempting to think of all that as ancient history. We learned our lesson about lab safety―and about the need to be straight with the public―and now we can move on to new crises, like measles or the evolving bird flu, right? Wrong. …

    Why haven't we learned our lesson? Maybe because it's hard to admit this research is risky now, and to take the requisite steps to keep us safe, without also admitting it was always risky. And that perhaps we were misled on purpose. …

    …[T]ake the real story behind two very influential publications that quite early in the pandemic cast the lab leak theory as baseless. The first was a March 2020 paper in the journal Nature Medicine, which was written by five prominent scientists, and which declared that no "laboratory-based scenario" for the pandemic virus was plausible. But we later learned through congressional subpoenas…that while the scientists publicly said the scenario was implausible, privately, many of its authors considered the scenario to be not just plausible but likely. One of the authors of that paper, the evolutionary biologist Kristian Andersen, wrote…, "The lab escape version of this is so friggin' likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario."

    Spooked, the co-authors reached out for advice to Jeremy Farrar, now the chief scientist at the World Health Organization. In his own book, Farrar reveals he acquired a burner phone and arranged meetings for them with high-ranking officials, including Francis Collins, then the director of the National Institutes of Health, and Anthony Fauci. … Operating behind the scenes, Farrar reviewed their draft and suggested to the authors that they rule out the lab leak even more directly. They complied.

    Andersen later testified to Congress that he had simply become convinced that a lab leak, while theoretically possible, was not plausible. Later chat logs obtained by Congress show the paper's lead authors discussing how to mislead Donald G. McNeil Jr., who was reporting on the pandemic's origin for The Times, so as to throw him off track about the plausibility of a lab leak.

    The second influential publication to dismiss the possibility of a lab leak was a letter published in early 2020 in The Lancet. The letter, which described the idea as a conspiracy theory, appeared to be the work of a group of independent scientists. It was anything but. …[T]he public later learned that behind the scenes, Peter Daszak, EcoHealth's president, had drafted and circulated the letter, while strategizing on how to hide his tracks and telling the signatories that it "will not be identifiable as coming from any one organization or person." The Lancet later published an addendum disclosing Daszak's conflict of interest as a collaborator of the Wuhan lab, but the journal did not retract the letter.

    And they had assistance. …[T]he public learned that David Morens, a senior scientific adviser to Fauci at N.I.H. [National Institutes of Health], wrote to Daszak that he had learned how to make "emails disappear," especially emails about pandemic origins. "We're all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns, and if we did we wouldn't put them in emails and if we found them we'd delete them," he wrote.

    Throat-clearing omitted.

    The C.I.A. recently updated its assessment of how the Covid pandemic began, judging a lab leak to be the likely origin, albeit with low confidence. The Department of Energy…and the F.B.I. had already come to that conclusion in 2023. But there are certainly more questions for governments and researchers across the world to answer. Why did it take until now for the German public to learn that way back in 2020, their Federal Intelligence Service endorsed a lab leak origin with 80 to 95 percent probability? What else is still being kept from us about the pandemic that half a decade ago changed all of our lives?

    To this day, there is no strong scientific evidence ruling out a lab leak or proving that the virus arose from human-animal contact in that seafood market. The few papers cited for market origin were written by a small, overlapping group of authors, including those who didn't tell the public how serious their doubts had been.

    Only an honest conversation will lead us forward. … We may not know exactly how the Covid pandemic started, but if research activities were involved, that would mean two out of the last four or five pandemics were caused by our own scientific mishaps. Let's not make a third.

    This assessment is appearing now because it's the five-year anniversary of the coronavirus panic of 2020. I usually oppose such anniversaries because of their arbitrariness, but it is useful to look back at one's past mistakes and try to learn from them. In that spirit, though I don't necessarily enjoy re-reading my own writing, I went back and re-read my first entry referencing the coronavirus from five years ago1. Thankfully, that post still holds up quite well against what we've learned since, but there was one mistake. In the section "Follow the Leader", I wrote:

    Thankfully, …epidemics of panic seem to die out on their own fairly quickly, which is what I expect will happen in the next few weeks. There are already signs that people are calming down and reconsidering how to rationally respond to the spread of the disease, and March madness may, thankfully, die with the month.

    This was overly optimistic. In fact, it took two or three years for the panic to subside, and it's not even completely over now. Historically, other similar epidemics of fear have died out within a few months or, at most, a year; for example, the Salem witchcraft panic died out within a year's time2, while the so-called Seattle windshield-pitting mass hysteria3 and the "mad gasser of Mattoon, Illinois"4 were over within months. It was with these and similar examples in mind that I expected the pandemic panic to die down within a few months or a year at most. It would appear that modern communications technology not only hastens and widens the spread of a panic, but it also makes it sustainable for longer periods of time.

    I won't make that mistake again.

    The following podcast is also from The New York Times:

  • "Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?", The Daily, 3/20/2025

    Short answer: no. Longer answer from the podcast itself or the transcript. There's too much worthwhile in the discussion to effectively excerpt, so I'll just say: listen to or read the whole thing.

Notes:

  1. March Madness, 3/28/2020.
  2. Jeff Wallenfeldt, "The trials", Britannica, accessed: 3/31/2025.
  3. Linton Weeks, "The Windshield-Pitting Mystery Of 1954", NPR, 5/28/2015.
  4. Brian Dunning, "The Mad Gasser of Mattoon", Skeptoid, 12/20/2016.

Disclaimer: I don't necessarily agree with everything in this article and podcast, but I think they're worth reading or listening to as a whole. In abridging the article, I changed some of the paragraphing.

Puzzle
March 29th, 2025 (Permalink)

Crack the Combination VIII*

The combination of a lock is four digits long and each digit is unique, that is, each occurs only once in the combination. The following are some incorrect combinations.

  1. 7 4 8 9: One digit is correct but in the wrong position.
  2. 9 1 2 6: Two digits are correct but only one is in the right position.
  3. 0 6 7 9: No digits are correct.
  4. 8 0 9 3: One digit is correct but in the wrong position.
  5. 0 6 8 1: One digit is correct and in the right position.

Can you determine the correct combination from the above clues?

*Previous "Crack the Combination" puzzles: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII.

Blind Spots
March 27th, 2025 (Permalink)

New Book

Quote: "This book may change your life. It did mine. You may forever view everything from menopause to microbiome health differently. You may also develop a reflex to ask for the underlying evidence or rationale to support a health recommendation…before you blindly abide by it. Having spent many hours with top doctors sorting scientific evidence from opinion on some of today's biggest health questions, I realize that much of what the public is told about health is medical dogma―an idea or practice given incontrovertible authority because someone decreed it to be true based on a gut feeling."1

Title: Blind Spots

Subtitle: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health

Comment: I would expect it means bad things for our health.

Author: Marty Makary

Comment: Makary is a physician and professor of medicine who has just been confirmed to head the Food and Drug Administration2. The only time I've written about Makary previously was in February 2021 when there was a large drop-off in Covid-19 cases3. Makary wrote an op-ed piece suggesting that the pandemic might be largely finished by April of that year due to the development of herd immunity. As I suggested at the time, this was overly optimistic. That prediction was, I suppose, the result of extrapolating out the then-current downward trend, but the only thing we know for sure about trends is that they don't continue4. At the time, it appeared that the decline might indeed be due to herd immunity, given that other explanations―such as bad weather, decreased testing, increased masking, and seasonality―didn't stand up to examination. Since herd immunity no longer seems to be a reasonable explanation, that leaves the decline unexplained.

Date: 2024

Comment: This book is not brand new since it was published last year before Makary was even nominated; what is new is that he will now have a powerful position in the health bureaucracy.

Summary: This book has an unusual structure: in the "Preface", Makary writes:

After the initial chapters, we'll pause and examine the human psychology of why we resist new ideas. You'll learn the mechanics of how our minds process new information when it conflicts with what we previously thought to be true. The human brain can do amazing things…[b]ut when it comes to receiving new information that conflicts with old information, it's predictably lazy5.

The initial chapters that Makary refers to appear to be discussions of specific medical errors about peanut allegies (1), hormone replacement therapy (2), over-use of antibiotics (3), and cholesterol (4). After that, we have a few chapters discussing why such mistakes are made, including intellectual inertia (5) and groupthink (10). In addition, there's a chapter on how the medical establishment works (6) and one on civil discourse (11). There are a few more chapters on specific medical issues, including birth (7), ovarian cancer (8), and silicone breast implants, autoimmune diseases, and opioid abuse (9).

Usually, in a book of this type, the general, theoretical chapters would be at the beginning, prior to those applying the generalities to specific cases; or, they would be at the end, deriving the generalities from the specific cases. Here, the generalities are sandwiched in between the specifics. I don't see any explanation by Makary for this odd structure, but perhaps the editor or publisher thought that a general readership would be discouraged if the book began by diving into theoretical discussions. Naturally, I'm most interested in those general chapters, but case histories of errors can be enlightening about the processes that lead to such errors.

Disappointingly, there is very little in the book about Covid-19 and the many errors made in dealing with the pandemic, with Makary writing: "This book does not discuss the Covid pandemic (people have become too tribal on the topic)….6" I certainly understand reluctance to deal with it while the wounds are still raw, but there's a danger of waiting too long, namely, that it will become a matter of purely historical interest.

Tribalism―in particular, political tribalism―is one source of medical error. For instance, taking seriously the idea that the novel coronavirus may have originated in a lab―the so-called lab leak theory―was taken as a sign of one's politics. Now, it's shedding its political force and becoming what it should have been all along, namely, a legitimate hypothesis7. Similarly, mask-wearing became as potent a political symbol as wearing a campaign button or a MAGA hat. How are we to fight such tribalism if we shy away from even discussing it?

Disclaimer: I haven't read this book yet, so can't review or recommend it, but its topic interests me and may also interest readers. The above remarks are based only on a sample of the book. I am not a physician. This entry is not intended to provide medical advice to individual readers. To obtain medical advice, the reader should consult a medical professional who will dispense advice based upon the reader's medical history and current medical condition8.

Notes:

  1. "Preface", p. xiv. All citations of just page numbers are to the New Book.
  2. Misty Severi, "Senate confirms Marty Makary to lead the FDA", Just the News, 3/26/2025.
  3. Have you heard of herd immunity?, 2/24/2021.
  4. See: Over-extrapolation.
  5. P. xv.
  6. P. 92.
  7. See: Kelsey Piper, "America―and the media―needs a Covid reckoning", Vox, 3/21/2025. I don't entirely agree with this article, but it's an admirable, if not totally successful, attempt on Piper's part to face up to past mistakes.
  8. The last two sentences are based on a "Publisher's Note" at the beginning of the New Book; p. ix.
Doublespeak
March 12th, 2025 (Permalink)

21st Century Doublespeak, Part 3

Last month, I discussed the use of the phrase "immigrant living in the country without legal permission" as a euphemism for "illegal immigrant"1: I doubted that such a long phrase would catch on with the writers and editors at influential publications as a substitute for "undocumented immigrant" or "undocumented worker". Despite my doubts, an article earlier this month was published under the following headline:

What we know (and don't know) about immigrants living in the Houston area without legal permission2

As I mentioned in the previous entry, the careless use of the adjectival phrase "without legal permission" often leads to ambiguous sentences. Here, it sounds as though it's just living around Houston that's the problem, whereas I suspect that the immigrants in question lack legal permission to be anywhere in the country.

The first paragraph of the article under the headline includes the sentence: "No one knows exactly how many immigrants live in the U.S. without legal permission", which confirms my suspicion. The article repeatedly uses the phrase "without legal permission" and "undocumented" occurs only once in the phrase "undocumented immigrants", which is additional evidence that "undocumented" is on its way out.

The article even includes a helpful sidebar explaining the meaning of the phrase "without legal permission":

What does it mean to live in the U.S. without legal permission?

This population, sometimes referred to as the "unauthorized" population, includes those who entered the U.S. illegally (for example, by crossing the U.S.-Mexico border) and those who overstayed or violated the terms of their visas. …

The sidebar initially explains "without legal permission" with another euphemism, "unauthorized", but it helpfully explains that both euphemisms refer to those who either entered or remain in the country "illegally". Why can't they just say so, then? Interestingly, the article includes the following passage:

Put simply, researchers took a U.S. Census estimate of the total number of people who were not born in the U.S. and subtracted from that the total number of legal immigrants, as tallied by the Department of Homeland Security. The result gives a rough baseline of the number of people living in the U.S. without legal permission.

Why does the article refer to "legal immigrants" instead of "people living in the U.S. with legal permission"? Perhaps that's a bit too long-winded. However, if it's permissible to write "legal immigrants" why is it impermissible to write "illegal immigrants"? If there are legal immigrants then there are illegal ones: otherwise, the adjective "legal" servers no purpose. For consistency's sake, one should write both or neither; for clarity's sake, both.

Notes:

  1. 21st Century Doublespeak, Part 2, 2/4/2025.
  2. Matt Zdun, "What we know (and don't know) about immigrants living in the Houston area without legal permission", Houston Chronicle, 3/5/2025.
Unauthorized immigrant repatriations from the US
March 8th, 2025 (Permalink)

How to Tell Half-Truths with Charts & Graphs

Graphics must not quote data out of context.1

We saw in a previous entry how it's possible to tell half-truths with photographs2, and in this entry we'll see how to do it with charts and graphs. A chart that tells a half-truth is not one that lies; instead, it's one that tells the truth but not the whole truth.

A bar chart appeared in an article in Newsweek about a month ago3 unfavorably comparing the numbers of deportations during Trump's first term to those under Biden's only term. A similar chart, shown above, appeared in Barron's about a month earlier4. The main difference between the two charts is that the Newsweek one breaks the data down by month, whereas Barron's one is broken down by year. Since I don't have the monthly data, I will concentrate on the above one in the rest of this entry, though the points made apply equally to both charts.

As far as I can tell, the statistical data displayed in the chart shown is correct5, but even so, the graph tells only half the story. The chart shows that many more "unauthorized"―that is, illegal―immigrants were repatriated to their countries of origin under the Democratic Biden administration as opposed to the previous Republican Trump administration.

Why is this data interesting? Given that the former and current president has been so gung-ho on expelling those who came here illegally, it's perhaps surprising that the previous one seems to have deported many more such immigrants. Based on the chart, should we conclude that Biden was actually a much more aggressive enforcer of the immigration laws than Trump, despite the latter's bluster?

What's wrong from this picture? The chart shows us only half of the picture: it only shows those being sent out of the country, not those coming in. Yet, the number of repatriations is partly a function of how many cross the border illegally and are subsequently "encountered" by agents of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Of course, not all illegal border crossers are encountered by the CBP, but this is the only measure we have of the number of such crossings. Everything else being even, the more who cross illegally, the more who will be encountered, and the more repatriated.

So, what is missing from the chart are the numbers of encounters by the CBP in the relevant years. Thankfully, the Office of Homeland Security Statistics (HSS) provides a chart showing the number of encounters for the past ten years6. Below, I've revised the above chart to incorporate the total number of encounters nationwide for each year based on the HSS's data7. Unauthorized immigrant repatriations from the US

It's not a pretty chart: if I were constructing it from scratch, I would use a more compact scale, and only lines for comparisons, but at least the revised chart tells the other half of the truth. As you can see for yourself, the most notable feature of the revised chart is the huge spike in encounters for the years 2021-2023, that is, in the first three years of the Biden administration. The number of encounters almost tripled from the high in 2019 under Trump―1.1 million―to the high under Biden in 2023―3.2 million. So, no wonder there were so many more repatriations during the Biden administration than during Trump's first term: there were many more to repatriate.

Notes:

  1. Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1997), p. 77. This is the last of Tufte's six principles of graphical integrity.
  2. How to Tell Half-Truths with Photographs, 2/12/2025.
  3. Dan Gooding, "Trump Migrant Deportation Numbers Compared to Obama, Biden", Newsweek, 2/11/2025.
  4. Corin Faife, Valentina Breschi & Omar Kamal, "Unauthorized Immigrant Repatriations From The US", Barron's, 1/17/2025. A French version of the graph can be viewed here: "Investiture de Trump: les migrants, un marché à plusieurs milliards de dollars pour les mafias", La Croix, 1/19/2025.
  5. It's difficult to be sure since the only precise number given is for part of last year, and otherwise one has to try to read the numbers off the scale at the left, but the amounts appear to be approximately correct.
  6. See: "CBP Encounters", Office of Homeland Security Statistics, 2/11/2025.
  7. 2014 is not included because that year is not included in the table―see previous note; also, I've left out the number of encounters for last year, since the chart includes only partial data for the year and the table is not broken down by month.

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