Alien Language: Immigration Metaphors and the Jurisprudence of Otherness

concepts such as immigration entail different, sometimes contradictory, realities. Therefore, multiple metaphoric expressions are needed in order to establish meaning.369 The goal of this project, then, is not to offer terms that comprehensively describe immigration, but rather to expand the cluster of metaphors used to talk and think about immigration.370 The potential awkwardness of the migration and economic sanctuary metaphors speaks to the ubiquity of existing representations. Outlaw discourses may seem strange or unrealistic to readers. 371 CONCLUSION But the economic sanctuary metaphor appears peculiar only because other metaphors such as invasion and flood appear normal. Likewise, the migration metaphor feels artificial only when terms such as illegal alien and undocumented worker appear to delineate the bounds of our discursive realities. Thus, in addition to highlighting new aspects of immigration-related issues, the terms proposed here serve as effective tools for deconstructing popular representations. This critical process diminishes the power of existing metaphors to conflate and essentialize, while creating space for new frames in the legal imagination. Human beings tell stories in order to comprehend the world around them. As the nation’s preeminent legal storyteller, the Supreme Court has employed a host of metaphors to tell its immigration stories. Complete with heroes, villains, and foreboding plotlines, these stories describe aliens attacking, invaders encroaching, and floods overwhelming communities. Behaving like good audience members, most judges, lawyers, and scholars have passively accepted this narrative. 369. Winter, The Metaphor of Standing, supra note 79, at 1492 (arguing that multiple metaphors create meaning). 370. See Lakoff & Johnson, supra note 61, at 200–06 (discussing the limitations of individual metaphoric representations). 371. Cisneros, supra note 312, at 592 (discussing the ubiquity of standard narratives). 1598 FORDHAM LAW REVIEW [Vol. 79 If they were not obscured by metaphors, the images of immigrants in Supreme Court texts would appear comical, if not utterly tragic. For example, immigrants are not animals that succumb to “lure[s]” or are hunted by “roving patrols.”372 Capturing migrants is not equivalent to cleaning up a “leaking hazardous waste dump,” even if the Supreme Court describes immigration in those terms.373 Because conceptual metaphors live in the imagination, attempts at revision must draw on the imaginative possibilities of language. If we can imagine immigration as an invasion, then we can also imagine it as a method for improving economic stability and national welfare. If, through metaphor, immigrants can be viewed as aliens and illegals, then they can also be viewed as migrants, workers, and community members. By critically evaluating metaphor—the cornerstone of immigration stories—we can approach legal opinions with a sense of agency, thereby rejecting the inevitability of current frames. From there, we might imagine a new immigration discourse for future legal texts—one that emphasizes cooperation over struggle, contribution over battle, and personhood over alienage. Yet metaphor’s power to distort and pass without notice enables these and other dehumanizing representations to evade evaluation. 372. Mich. Dep’t of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444, 471 n.15 (1990) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (emphasis added). 373. INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. 1032, 1046 (1984) (emphasis added).