President Biden’s immigration bill would change “foreign” to “noncitizen” in United States law – the latest movement in the struggle for immigration and immigrant-related language.
The Biden administration is revealing the 2021 U.S. Citizenship Act, which would include a series of radical measures, such as an eight-year path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and immediate green cards for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Recipient Temporary Protection Status (TPS).
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Although the text of the bill has not yet been released, a bulletin released by Biden’s transition team before taking office said that the bill would remove the word “foreigner” from immigration laws and replace it with “non-citizen”.
The fact sheet said the measure “recognizes America as a nation of immigrants”.
Immigration activists and lawmakers have long struggled over immigration-related language. Many now refer not to illegal immigrants, but to “undocumented” immigrants.
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“Alien” has long been used in the United States immigration code and law as a whole, but has been resisted by liberal activists and cities. New York City announced last year that it would no longer refer to “foreigners” or “illegal immigrants”.
Meanwhile, during the Trump administration, there were also battles over conservative language.
BuzzFeed News reported in 2019 that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) planned to change all references to the term “foreign” to “foreign” in the agency’s policy manual.
A USCIS spokesman told the media he was in line with the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
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“According to INA, the term ‘foreigner’ means ‘anyone who is not a citizen or national of the United States’,” they said.
Biden has already made a number of significant moves in relation to immigration, establishing a 100-day moratorium on deportations, interrupting the wall’s funding and reversing Trump-era travel bans.