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Officials from the Department of Homeland Security have been urged to stop using words such as “foreigner” and “illegal foreigner” from communications with the public or within the agency when referring to individuals. who are not U.S. citizens in an effort by the Biden administration to overhaul immigration terminology.
The planned wording change, recounted in a note obtained by BuzzFeed News, is the latest flashpoint in a year-long debate over how immigrants are described in federal laws and by agencies that oversee the immigration. Earlier Tuesday, Axios reported an email to staff about the memo.
For immigrants and their advocates, this represents a departure from a word that has been described as “dehumanizing” to those who hope to make the United States their new home, while others think it is an unnecessary step. that undermines federal law.
The term “foreigner” is found in the US Code and is regularly mentioned in the immigration system and in court decisions to describe anyone who is not a US citizen. In recent years, however, the word has been wiped from the California Labor Code and the Library of Congress after advocacy efforts.
To that end, Tracy Renaud, the acting head of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, issued a memo that calls on the agency’s management to make the following changes: no longer refer to people as “illegal aliens”, “foreigners” or “undocumented”. foreigner ”in internal and external communications, but to use the terms“ non-citizen ”,“ undocumented non-citizen ”or“ undocumented person ”instead. Further, USCIS seeks to no longer use “assimilation,” but rather to use “onboarding,” as well as designating those requesting benefits like green cards as “customers.”
The wording changes do not affect the forms or operational documents where the use of the previous terminology is most appropriate, but the new terminology will be visible in the communications that the agency will have internally and with the public. Renaud, a career agency official, wrote that she leaves it to agency members to determine “the best way to implement” the wording change guidelines. Agency officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The change is already noticeable in public statements and memoranda.
On January 20, Acting DHS Secretary David Pekoske used the term “non-citizen” to describe undocumented people who are at risk of being arrested by immigration and customs services. In comments to the media, ICE officials have switched from using an “illegal alien,” which was commonly used under the Trump administration, to “non-citizen” in comments to reporters.
The interagency effort is also another signal that, as the Biden administration urges Congress to take action – as a flagged immigration bill would remove the word ‘foreigner’ from immigration laws – it will also work. through federal agencies to implement more immediate changes.
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, professor of law at the University of Denver, said the wording changes would be significant.
“Removing the ‘aliens’ … won’t stop ICE from deporting anyone or making life easier for people who are not US citizens. Still, it is important to remove the word ‘alien’, ”he said,“ because it is offensive to describe people using the same word that conjures up 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 removed the word “foreign” from California legal records, and a Colorado lawmaker attempted a similar move in 2019. Rep. Joaquin Castro introduced a bill in 2019 to delete the word “foreigner” at the federal level. Likewise, the immigration bill proposed by Biden would completely remove word of the immigration and nationality law.
These attempts contrast with the Trump administration, which dubbed the use of the word “alien”. In 2019, USCIS officials changed all references to the term “foreign national” to “foreigner” in the agency’s policy manual, and CNN reported that the Department of Justice had asked U.S. lawyers to ‘use’ illegal alien ‘instead of’ undocumented immigrants’ in 2018.
Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, professor at Penn State Law, said she believes changing the word “foreigner” to “undocumented” could change the way the country discusses immigrants, and it could promote inclusion and equity at a time when immigration has become a divisive issue.
While British citizens were among the first to be characterized as aliens by the US legal system, the term has been commonly linked to immigrants of color, dating back to laws banning Chinese immigration and continuing throughout the 1900s, according to Kevin Johnson, Dean of Law at the University of California, Davis.
“Prior to 1952, for example, the law prevented most non-white immigrants from naturalizing to become citizens, thus forever relegating non-citizens of color to alien status and effectively defining them as permanent aliens in American society. ”He wrote in a 1997 essay tracing the history of the word. “In fact, the term foreigner serves to dehumanize people. We have little or no legal obligations to strangers outside the community, although we do have obligations to individuals. People have rights while foreigners don’t. “
Former Trump administration official Robert Law, who has led policy at USCIS, criticized the idea of any changes in a recent blog post.
“Immigration is a complex issue, but the statutory definition of ‘foreigner’ is as benign as any word in our laws could be,” he wrote in the blog. “The term ‘extraterrestrial’ is precise, accurate and in no way offensive. To suggest otherwise is to suspend reality and it is not a serious or reasonable position. “
For Raymond Partolan, a 27-year-old green card holder from Atlanta, the change is slow in coming.
“When we call people aliens, we rob them of their sense of humanity. Every time someone uses the word alien, it conjures up images of beings who are out of this world, ”he says.
Now a paralegal, Partolan arrived in the United States at the age of one and was granted deportation protection 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 my desire to call this place home. me, “he said.” I think words matter. “
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