Department of Homeland Security officials have been instructed to stop using words like “foreign” and “illegal alien” in communications with the public or within the agency when referring to people who are not US citizens in an effort by the Biden government to overhaul immigration terminology.
The planned wording change, retold in a memo obtained by BuzzFeed News, is the last critical point in a year-long debate over the way immigrants are described in federal law and by the agencies that oversee immigration. Axios on Tuesday informed the team in an email about the memo.
For immigrants and their advocates, it represents a departure from a word that has been described as “dehumanizing” for those who wish to make the USA their new home, while others believe it is an unnecessary measure that weakens federal law.
The term “foreigner” is found in the United States Code and is regularly mentioned in the immigration system and in court decisions to describe everyone who is not a citizen of the United States. In recent years, however, the word has been deleted from the California Labor Code and the Library of Congress after advocacy efforts.
To that end, Tracy Renaud, the interim leader for the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, issued a memo instructing the agency’s leadership to make the following changes: no longer referring to people as “illegal alien”, “foreigner” or “undocumented foreign” in internal and external communications, but instead use the terms “noncitizen”, “undocumented noncitizen” or “undocumented individual”. In addition, USCIS is trying not to use “assimilation” anymore, but instead, use “integration” as well as refer to those who apply for benefits such as green cards as “customers”.
The wording changes do not impact forms or operational documents where the use of the previous terminology is more appropriate, but the new terminology will be seen in all communications that the agency makes internally and with the public. Renaud, a career agency worker, wrote that she leaves it up to those within the agency to determine “the best way to implement” the text change guidance. Agency officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The change is already noticeable in public statements and memos as well.
On January 20, then-acting DHS secretary David Pekoske relied on the term “noncitizen” when describing undocumented individuals who were in danger of being arrested by the Immigration and Customs Department. In media comments, ICE officials switched from using “illegal alien”, which was commonly used during the Trump administration, to “noncitizen” in comments to reporters.
The interagency effort is also another sign that, as the Biden government urges Congress to act – as a reported immigration bill would eliminate the word “foreigner” in immigration laws – it will also work through federal agencies to implement changes more immediate.
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor at the University of Denver, said the changes in the newsroom would be significant.
“Removing ‘alien’ … will not prevent ICE from deporting anyone or make life easier for people who are not American citizens. Still, it is important to remove the word ‘alien’, “he said,” because it is offensive to describe people using the same word that evokes images of two-headed Martian invaders. “
Efforts have been made to change the wording at national and local levels. In 2015, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law that eliminated the word “foreigner” from California’s legal records, and a Colorado lawmaker tried similar action in 2019. Representative Joaquin Castro introduced a bill in 2019 to withdraw the word “foreign” at the federal level. Likewise, the immigration bill proposed by Biden would totally cut the word out of the Immigration and Nationality Law.
These attempts contrast with the Trump administration, which has doubled the use of the word “foreigner”. In 2019, USCIS officials changed all references to the term “foreigner” to “foreigner” in the agency’s policy manual, and CNN reported that the Department of Justice instructed U.S. prosecutors to use “illegal alien” instead of ” undocumented migrants “in 2018.
Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, a professor at Penn State Law, said she sees changing the word “foreign” to “undocumented” has the potential to change the way the country discusses immigrants and can promote inclusion and equality during a period when immigration has become a divisive issue.
Although British citizens were some of the first to be called foreigners by the US legal system, the term has been commonly associated with immigrants of color, dating back to laws prohibiting Chinese immigration and continuing into parts of the 1900s, according to Kevin Johnson, Dean of the University of California, Davis School of Law.
“Before 1952, for example, the law prohibited most non-white immigrants from becoming naturalized to become citizens, forever relegating non-citizens of color to the status of foreigners and effectively defining them as permanent strangers in the society of United States, ”he wrote in a 1997 essay that traced the history of the word. “In effect, the term foreign serves to dehumanize people. We have few, if any, legal obligations to strangers to the community, although we have obligations to people. People have rights, while foreigners do not. “
Former Trump administration official Robert Law, who headed USCIS policy, criticized the idea of any changes in a recent blog post.
“Immigration is a complex issue, but the legal definition of ‘foreigner’ is as benign as any word in our laws could be,” he wrote on the blog. “The term ‘alien’ is precise, exact and in no way offensive. To suggest otherwise is to suspend reality and is not a serious or reasonable position. “
For Raymond Partolan, a 27-year-old green card holder from Atlanta, the move will take too long to arrive.
“When we call people aliens, we are depriving them of their sense of humanity. Whenever someone uses the word alien, it evokes images of beings that are out of this world, ”he said.
Now a paralegal, Partolan came to the USA when he was 1 year old and obtained protection against deportation later in life as a DACA beneficiary.
“I would call myself a Filipino-American – I want to spend the rest of my life in the United States, and when the laws classify me as a foreigner, I see it as an attempt to deprive myself of the desire to call this place home,” he said. ” I think words matter. “