Some words have no purpose other than to be pejorative. The obvious example is the “N-word,” but there are plenty of others to cover Italians, Irish, Jews, Asians, Hispanics, and even French. In WWII, the Germans were called “krauts” and the Japanese were called “nips.” But these are slurs, created as slurs and for the purpose of slurring. They are meant to insult and dehumanize, even if they’re later adopted to seize the sting and turn it around, as did our forefathers with Yankee Doodle Dandy.
But “alien”? It’s a word with a longstanding legal definition and used regularly in statutes. It was sullied by use in the phrase “illegal alien,” for which there is no legal definition or legal usage, and is a misleading phrase in any event. This became the pejorative phrase. And because alien was so often used in this phrase, the stink of the first word rubbed off on the second.
The phrase “undocumented immigrant” became the preferred phrase for anyone who wasn’t a lawful immigrant, even though it too suffered from imprecision and false connotations. People who are deported and then sneak back in to sell drugs to send back to their country so when they return, they will be rich, are not undocumented immigrants. Nor does it apply well to students who overstay their visa. But I digress.
In a curious war of woke, the Eleventh Circuit battled it out over the word “alien” in the concurrences.
I write separately to note why I prefer not to use the term “alien,” which the panel opinion uses ten times. Justice Kavanaugh has equated the term “noncitizen” with the statutory term “alien.” Nasrallah v. Barr, 590 U.S. __, 140 S. Ct. 1683, 1689 n.2 (2020); see also United States v. Estrada, 969 F.3d 1245, 1253 n.3 (11th Cir. 2020). “Alien” is increasingly recognized as an “archaic and dehumanizing” term. Maria Sacchetti, ICE, CBP to Stop Using ‘Illegal Alien’ and ‘Assimilation’ Under New Biden Administration Order, Wash. Post (Apr. 19, 2021).
To the extent the term “noncitizen” does not, in every instance, serve as a perfect replacement for the term “alien,” that concern is not present in this case. I see no need to use a term that “has become pejorative” where a non-pejorative term works perfectly well. Library of Congress, Library of Congress to Cancel the Subject Heading “Illegal Aliens” at 1 (2016), https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/illegal-aliens-decision.pdf.
Does a WaPo op-ed news article inform a judge that a statutory word is “increasingly (by whom?) recognized as an ‘archaic and dehumanizing’ term”? The push has been going on over the past few years to take common words and turn them into pejoratives, to be replaced by phrases or long, unwieldy, sometimes made-up words word of no particular meaning. People aren’t homeless anymore. They’re unhoused or housing challenged, the point being that calling someone homeless is to call them a bum, who brought his circumstances down on himself, rather than a unfortunate victim of an uncaring society. It’s not the word that’s bad, but the projection of the worst connotation unto the word that creates an impression that the word is the problem. Then again, calling someone “unhoused” doesn’t mean he still isn’t living in a cardboard box, but at least the user of the new word feels as if he contributed something beneficial to the cause.
Adding to her majority opinion, Judge Elizabeth Branch writes separately in concurrence.
I recognize that, on occasion, the Supreme Court has used the term “noncitizen” rather than “alien” in its general discussion of our country’s immigration laws. For example, in Barton v. Barr, the Court noted that “[t]his opinion uses the term ‘noncitizen’ as equivalent to the statutory term ‘alien.'” 140 S. Ct. 1442, 1446 n.2 (2020). But the Court in that same opinion nonetheless used the correct statutory term “alien” when quoting the INA. Id. at 1446. And subsequent Supreme Court precedent has confirmed that the term “alien” remains appropriate. See Garland v. Dai, 141 S. Ct. 1669, 1680 (2021).
Alien wasn’t created as a slur, but as a word with specific legal meaning. There are legal aliens, aliens here for limited purposes such as those on work or student visas. There are asylum seekers and there are aliens who are here without authority, and aliens who committed a crime by crossing a border illegally. It doesn’t make them bad people, although some may be. And each is still a person, for better or worse. But when discussing their status as foreign nationals on American soil, alien serves a purpose.
Whether “noncitizen” serves the purpose well enough is debatable, but misses the point. Is it any less “dehumanizing,” if that’s the complaint? There are “word police” to inform us that we’ve used a word they feel is politically incorrect, even if accurate, but often find that the euphemisms fail to work. It may be true that the derivation of “hysterical” was sexist, but is there a word that conveys the same meaning of suffering from uncontrolled extreme emotion?
It’s bad enough that our general discourse has become so muddled that we are often left to wonder what the hell someone is talking about. We saw it with the word “rape,” not knowing whether the person claiming it occurred was hit over the head and thrown to the ground in a dark alley or had a couple beers and changed her mind after she learned the guy had a girlfriend. We saw it with calling a woman “unhinged” because telling women they were crazy was a tool of oppression, which may be true but doesn’t mean women can’t be nuts just like, you know, any other human being.
But in law, there is a secondary problem. Ten years from now people will cite the decisions being written in these woke-conflicted moments using words that say one thing but mean something else for fear of offending. It’s bad enough that legislatures are writing laws that seek to ban a litany of erstwhile vague and nameless ideological influences under the guise of “critical race theory,” but what will courts make of these laws, of all laws, when the only tool they possess are words and their tool has been blunted to the point of well-intended confusion.*
Alien is not a slur. It’s a descriptive word that can be, and often is, used to describe something that some people would prefer not be susceptible to description under some circumstances. But making it wrong to utter doesn’t change the existence of the problem of undocumented immigrants any more than calling someone “unhoused” doesn’t put a roof over his head.
*Perhaps some will deny there’s any confusion at all, secure in their absolute certainty that their idiosyncratic belief in what a word means, followed by some tasty word salad, provides an answer. Your “truth” is yours and yours alone. Spare us your narcissistic delusions of grandeur.
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“I meant what I said, and I said what I meant.
An elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent.”
Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches the Egg
There’s never been great rhyme or reason to this process. “Retarded”, “imbecile,” and “moron” all started as medical terms for the intellectually disabled, but only one of them is considered offensive because no one remembers the origin of the other ones. Although, if someone wanted to declare a new word offensive, they should really produce some sort of survey showing an increase in pejorative usage.
Now I’m curious how many Americans think “alien” refers to extraterrestrials.
No Humpty Dumpty reference this time? I’m disappointed. It’s interesting (or is it boring?) to see that we are still having the same problems over 150 years later. Keep up your protestations; they may not change the world, but I hope they will cause someone to rethink their solipsistic linguistic practices.
This kerfuffle over “alien” and “noncitizen” reminds of me Late Prof. Chris Fairman’s Washington Post article (“The case against banning the word ‘retard'”, 14 Feb 2010, available at [Ed. Note: Link deleted because rules.]
He lucidly lays out the case that words which are sought to be made verboten today were themselves originally used as an attempt to convey greater dignity and respect than previous labels had. As he put it, ‘Invariably, negative connotations materialize around whatever new word is used; “idiot” becomes an insult and gives way to “retardation,” which in turn suffers the same fate, leading to “intellectual disability.” … New words of insult will replace old ones.’
I wonder, after some years have passed, what word would replace “noncitizen”.
“Noncitizen” is an attempt to frame the person negatively in a manner that denies them the intrinsic human value ascribed to those with citizen privilege. Instead of what they are, we’re told what’s important and defining is what they lack. We need to shut down this white nationalist nonsense, hate speech is not free speech, #Cancel11thCir
Maybe “strangers” or “outlanders” will catch on.
Why harp on their outsider status at all, xenophobe?
I look forward (NOT) to the confusion when a case involving American Samoan non-citizen (but not “alien”?) US nationals gets decided and figuring out the different meanings of the same word noncitizen…
Now, people misquote from law fairly regularly because they don’t understand what the words means. In a few years, they will do the same, but the fault will belong to the court.
We could call them Visitors, V for short (both singular and plural).
The original or the series?
“V” would also raise issues, harking back to the TV series of the same name and I am not sure anyone would want to be referred to as space lizard aliens (who were referred to as “Visitors”). In time I would think all labels will end up being “problematic”
How did you determine that the phrase “illegal alien” is one “for which there is no legal definition or legal usage”? Has 8 USC 1365 been abolished from the universe of legal usage for insufficient sensitivity to woke sensibilities? Granted that the legal usage might be a little more restricted that the common usage, in that the definition says it’s aliens in the country illegally who have been convicted of a felony, but really not, since the heading to subsection (b) reads, “Illegal aliens convicted of a felony,” which kind of implies that the felony conviction isn’t necessary to be an illegal alien. And what about 8 USC 1366, requiring reporting on the number of “illegal aliens” incarcerated for or convicted of felonies? Or 42 USC 6705(e), where it’s only used in a heading, but still part of the statute? Or 8 USC 1621(d), where it’s used in a heading to refer to aliens unlawfully in the United States? Or 2 USC 658(5)(a)(ii)(II), where the phrase is used in the definition of “Federal intergovernmental mandate”? Or 8 USC 1330(b)(3)(A)(iii), where it’s used in the conventional sense of a person in the country in violation of immigration laws? Or 6 USC 240(e), where it’s again usedin that same conventional sense? Or 8 USC 1252c, where it’s used in the section heading, apparantly in the conventional sense? Or 49 USC 40125(a)(2), where it’s used apparantly in the conventional sense in the definition of “governmental function”?
The fact is that just like the word “alien,” the phrase “illegal alien” has a longstanding legal usage in multiple titles of the U.S. Code. It only became “sullied” because opponents of immigration restrictions and supporters of people in the country illegally want to deemphasize the fact that “undocumented immigrants” are violating U.S. immigration laws. And, like, you know, because people aren’t “illegal,” and it’s insensitive to try to define them by whether or not their immigration status is technically in compliance with some legal technicality.
But really just a Newspeak thing. “Illegal” implies they’re breaking the law by entering or remaining in the country in violation of the law. And “alien”? That sounds positively unnaturalized. (Also, “aliens” are monsters from outer space who mean us no good. That’s why E.T. is referred to as an “extraterrestrial,” not an “alien.” Because aliens mean us no good.) On the other hand, “undocumented” suggests it’s just a paperwork thing, and since they’re “immigrants” rather than “aliens,” the right to stay is practically a semantic fait accompli as soon as you start talking about it. Control the language, and you control the argument.
IMO. YMMV, of course.
You are right and I stand corrected:
(b) Illegal aliens convicted of a felony
An illegal alien referred to in subsection (a) is any alien who is any alien convicted of a felony who is in the United States unlawfully and—
(1)whose most recent entry into the United States was without inspection, or
(2)whose most recent admission to the United States was as a nonimmigrant and—
(A)whose period of authorized stay as a nonimmigrant expired, or
(B)whose unlawful status was known to the Government, before the date of the commission of the crime for which the alien is convicted.
When I saw the title of this post I thought you were going to be writing about the
word, “exotic”. According to a “perspective” piece in the NY Times, we should not
call things exotic anymore because the word has been used from an anglocentric
viewpoint by Whites to describe people, plants and animals from non-white countries
that have been enslaved and colonized by white people.
Nevermind that every language has hundreds of words that reflect the viewpoints
of the cultures from which they sprang. Any word that originated in a White culture
is associated with oppression by default.