Immigration law: Biden wants to remove this controversial word from US laws

Immigration law: Biden wants to remove this controversial word from US laws

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But the symbolic meaning is enormous.

The bill proposed by Biden, if passed, would remove the word “foreigner” from United States immigration laws, replacing it with the term “noncitizen”.

The term “illegal alien”, long condemned as a dehumanizing slander by immigrant rights defenders, became even more of a lightning rod during the Trump era – with some top federal officials encouraging its use and several states and local governments taking action to ban this.
“The language change on the first day of this government, with Kamala Harris the daughter of immigrants, for me is not only symbolic … it is fundamental”, says José Antonio Vargas, an undocumented immigrant whose organization, Define American, presses for more portraits needs of immigrants.

“The way we describe people is really irrelevant. It affects how we treat them, ”he says. “The way we talk about immigrants shapes policies. It defines what issues are really at stake here. Recognizes that we are talking about human beings and families.”

What the laws say now

The US code currently defines “foreigner” as “anyone who is not a citizen or national of the United States”.

Officials in the past have pointed to the prevalence of the term in US law to defend their word choices.

In 2018, former attorney general Jeff Sessions instructed prosecutors to refer to someone who is illegally in the United States as “an illegal alien”, citing the U.S. code in an agency-wide email.
Department of Justice: Use 'illegal aliens', not 'undocumented'

The term “foreigner” was frequently invoked by President Trump in speeches, while warning about what he considered the dangers of uncontrolled illegal immigration.

Speaking at the border with Mexico last week in one of his final speeches as president, Trump used the term at least five times.

“We were in the Trump administration, the perennial boogeyman,” said Vargas. “Whenever Trump was in trouble, he would start talking about the ‘illegal’ and the border.”

But not everyone in the Trump administration was a fan of the language.

In an interview with the Washington Post published just before he resigned as interim secretary of homeland security in 2019, Kevin McAleenan told the newspaper that he avoided using the term “illegal aliens” and instead described people as “migrants” .

“I think words matter a lot,” said McAleenan, according to the Post. “If you alienate half of your audience using terminology, it will hurt your ability to win an argument.”

This is not the first effort to change this wording

California considered the state’s labor code in 2015 to be “foreign”.

New York City removed the term from its administrative and administrative code last year.
In guidelines issued in 2019, New York City banned the term “illegal alien” when used “with the intention of demeaning, humiliating or harassing a person”. Violations, the city warned, could result in fines of up to $ 250,000.
And last year, two Colorado lawmakers introduced a bill to replace the term “illegal alien” with “undocumented immigrant”. The bill never reached the state Senate floor for voting.

People who called pranks aimed at the term at the beginning of the Trump administration

One of the first times that the use of the term “alien” attracted great attention during the Trump administration was in 2017, after authorities published a hotline for victims of “crimes committed by removable aliens”.

Prank callers quickly flooded the line with stories about aliens, sharing social media examples of their comments about Martians and UFOs.

High-level trolls overwhelm the hotline for undocumented ICE immigrants with alien calls

But Vargas says the term and others used to demonize immigrants are no laughing matter.

“Language has power. And I think we saw that in the Trump administration, how he used dehumanizing terms and downgraded language and, in turn, downgraded people, ”says Vargas. “If you call them ‘aliens’, of course you are going to put them in prison, of course you are going to lock them up, of course you are not going to mind separating the children from their parents.”

Vargas says the new government’s effort to use more respectful language gives him hope that the opinions of some Americans about undocumented migrants may also change. Changing just one word, he says, can have a far-reaching impact for millions of people.

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