Illegal alien

Terminology explanations

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War on Terror

Illegal alien is a term that is at times used to refer to an individual residing in the United States without legal permission.

Uses

Ballotpedia's use of illegal alien is limited to referencing what government agencies and media sources use. Other terms to describe illegal alien include:

• Undocumented immigrant
• Criminal alien
• Illegal immigrant
• Unauthorized immigrant
• Migrant
• Noncitizen

Other definitions

Federal law

Federal law employs the term alien, which it defines as "any person not a citizen or national of the United States."

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a Criminal Alien Program (CAP), which uses the term alien in its program description. The program's web page states the following:

“

The Criminal Alien Program (CAP) provides ICE-wide direction and support in the biometric and biographic identification, arrest, and removal of priority aliens who are incarcerated within federal, state, and local prisons and jails, as well as at-large criminal aliens that have circumvented identification. It is incumbent upon ICE to ensure that all efforts are made to investigate, arrest, and remove individuals from the United States that ICE deems priorities by processing the alien expeditiously and securing a final order of removal for an incarcerated alien before the alien is released to ICE custody. The identification and processing of incarcerated criminal aliens, before release from jails and prisons, decreases or eliminates the time spent in ICE custody and reduces the overall cost to the Federal Government.

”

Arguments

Proponents

Those in favor of using the term illegal alien argue that it is a legally accurate term used in federal law and other formal documentation. They also argue that its alternatives, such as undocumented immigrant, are euphamisms used to distract others from considering whether someone has violated U.S. immigration law. Hans A. von Spakovsky at The Heritage Foundation said illegal alien is the correct term:

“	'Undocumented immigrant' is a politically correct, made-up term adopted by pro-illegal alien advocacy groups and liberal media outlets to obscure the fact that such aliens have violated U.S. immigration law and are in the country illegally...If we are going to discuss and debate the issue of immigration and what our public policy should be, we should at least use accurate, precise terms, and talk about, for example, legal aliens vs. illegal aliens.	”
—Hans A. von Spakovsky (2018)

Opponents

Those opposed to using the term illegal alien argue the use of the word illegal dehumanizes people and does not fully consider the exceptional cases of refugees. Opponents also argue that actions are illegal, not people. An opinion piece in The British Medical Journal read:

“	Some people think that those who protest against this phrase are taking sides with migrants in conflict with the law, in a futile attempt to cover up what is going on. On the contrary: the very idea that a person can be illegal is incompatible with the rule of law, which is founded on the idea that everyone has the right to due process and is equal in the eyes of the law. Labelling [sic] a person as “illegal” insinuates that their very existence is unlawful.	”
—The British Medical Journal (2018)

Background

Americans began using the term illegal alien in literature in 1924. One of the term's earliest appearances in media was when the New York Times used it in 1926 in an article titled “Over Border on Bicycle.”