Talk:Illegal immigration

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 31 August 2021 and 3 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): AngelMarieSimmons.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:16, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Use of the term "Illegal Immigrant" in Title 8
by states that "the term "illegal immigrant" is not defined in the statute and is only present in Title 8 within a signing statement by President Clinton", and that this term  "is not legally correct terminology". The only reference provided is a link to the raw text of Title 8. At the same time, the Cato Institute article that is already cited in the article cites Arizona v. United States, 132 S. Ct. 2492, 2497 (2012), stating that "The Court [the United States District Court for the southern district Brownsville division] uses the phrases "illegal immigrant" and "illegal alien" interchangeably". The claim that that a term used in Title 8 of the US Code is incorrect is rather extraordinary, and should be supported by extraordinary sources. A handwave towards the president who signed the law seems to suggest that he didn't know to use correct terminology in his laws. This would perhaps be superficially plausible with the commander-in-chief-currently, but Bill Clinton happened to be a lawyer himself, on top of the fact that the law was written by a team of lawyers anyway. I suggest this edit to be reverted until a better source is provided. Heptor (talk) 22:37, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Brief summary: makes a rather extraordinary claim, not supported by the source it provides. Heptor (talk) 23:38, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Illegal vs Undocumented immigrants
Dear fellow Wikipedians,

I'd like to reopen the debate on the use of the term "illegal migrant" in this article, because I'd love to know your point of view on this in 2020. As was already pointed out in an previous discussion and in the Terminology section (however without a concrete conclusion), more and more organisations and institutions have started to use the term "undocumented migrant", "irregular migrant" or "unauthorized migrant" when talking about people who stay in a country without the necessary paperwork, instead of "illegal migrant" or "illegal alien". "Undocumented" is nowadays seen as the more neutral term, while "illegal" is being more and more regarded as offensive and according to Wikipedia's guidelines, biased terms should be avoided (Manual of Style/Words to watch). Certainly because the terminology that is being used to refer to certain people can have a real impact, in this case negatively, and influence people's perceptions. Calling a person "illegal" reduces a person to just that, implying they're undeserving of rights, and that's discriminatory and dehumanising. The term "illegal immigrant" is only applicable to foreign born citizens found guilty of a crime (and being in a country without the necessary paperwork isn't even a crime in all countries), but in this article it is being used to describe people without a valid residence status in a way that is too general and implies criminality. And doesn't "illegal immigrant" seems to be a contradiction in itself? As "immigrant" actually refers to a lawful status?

I will now list some sources to back up this statement: - https://blog.ap.org/announcements/illegal-immigrant-no-more - https://splinternews.com/the-illegal-index-which-news-organizations-still-use-t-1793844197 - file:///C:/Users/intern2/Downloads/Undocumented_vs_Illegal_Migrant_Towards_Terminolog.pdf - https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/01/30/170677880/in-immigration-debate-undocumented-vs-illegal-is-more-than-just-semantics?t=1602163988291 - http://picum.org/words-matter/ and https://www.unhcr.org/cy/wp-content/uploads/sites/41/2018/09/TerminologyLeaflet_EN_PICUM.pdf - https://www.thoughtco.com/illegal-immigrants-or-undocumented-immigrants-721479 - https://www.raceforward.org/practice/tools/drop-i-word - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/insider/illegal-undocumented-unauthorized-the-terms-of-immigration-reporting.html - http://www.parlarecivile.it/che-cos%C3%A8-parlare-civile.aspx - https://ideas.time.com/2012/09/21/immigration-debate-the-problem-with-the-word-illegal/ - https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-i-dont-use-the-iwordi_b_763189?guccounter=1 - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/12/undocumented-antonio-jose-vargas - https://www.iom.int/key-migration-terms - https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/terminology - https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/e-library/glossary/i_en - The term "sans papiers" in French is most widely used and literally means "without papers" - https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/should-i-use-the-term-illegal-immigrant - https://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/05/opinion/garcia-illegal-immigrants/index.html - https://www.fosterglobal.com/blog/the-dehumanizing-history-of-the-words-weve-used-to-describe-immigrants/ - The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly highlighted the importance of the language used in its Resolution 1509(2006): “the Assembly prefers to use the term ‘irregular migrant’ to other terms such as ‘illegal migrant’ or ‘migrant without papers’. - ...

I'm not talking of moving the page or changing the term "illegal immigration" as a concept used in this article. I saw that this was already subject to several debates in the past. And I agree that "illegal immigration" does have the most search results online and is widely used. I just wanted to address the use of the word "illegal" when it refers to people. An act can be illegal, but a person in fact can't. The term "illegal immigrant" calls the person illegal rather than the act and so is not an accurate description. It is great that the Terminology section was added, but would it be an issue to change "illegal migrant" to "undocumented/irregular/unauthorized migrant" in the text of this article based on the sources listed above? Maybe we can find a compromise here? 88.82.58.143 (talk) 14:16, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * "Illegal immigrant" might not be an appropriate term (depending on the laws of the country in question, and what evidence you have that someone has actually broken them). But "undocumented immigrant" strikes me as a very dubious alternative.  It seems to imply that the only issue is a bureaucratic one: e.g. that that didn't fill in their papers properly (and that if they then do so, everything will be OK).  It also could imply "immigration that we don't know about" (which covers some but not all illegal immigration).  Iapetus (talk) 10:48, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

The main problem from the perspective of a Wikipedia writer or editor is that there is no commonly accepted politically neutral term anymore. "Illegal immigrant" is widely seen as biased by those on the political left, and "undocumented migrant" is seen as biased by those on the political right. "People who have immigrated illegally" has been suggested as a neutral term, but it is awkward, especially in an article that uses the term so frequently. As a lawyer, I see the term "illegal immigrant" as an accurate and neutral term from a legal perspective, but I recognise it is no longer seen as such by a broad group.

Also I note that the argument that "people can't be illegal", and therefore the phrase "illegal immigrant" is wrong, is I think a specious one. If someone has no driving license, we might reasonably call them an "illegal driver" when they are behind the wheel. We could call a person who practices medicine without a license an "illegal doctor". The word illegal refers to the act implied by the noun, not to the existence of the person. Jaywilson (talk) 13:26, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

An IP editor, likely the same person as IP88 above,. As is apparent above, this replacement was not supported by consensus. It also contradicted the cited references. Therefore, I, and restored the article to its previous state. Heptor (talk) 22:26, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

I would like to register my support for the replacement of "illegal immigrant" with "undocumented immigrant". However, I see no issues with the term "illegal immigration". The problem is that "illegal immigrant" implies an inherent moral judgment on the personhood of the immigrant themself, whereas "undocumented" underscores the reality that the individual has no legal standing in the country to which they immigrated, due to improper or absent bureaucratic process on the immigrant's part. "Illegal immigration", by contrast, emphasizes the improper bureaucratic process or lack of bureaucratic process, without dehumanizing a person. newmila (talk) 21:37, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

I do not believe there is wrong with using the term "illegal immigrant" on this article, and I would oppose mass replacing it on this article with "undocumented", as I believe RSs still use it. Both terms are problematic the former is that as no person can be inherently illegal, though perhaps it is just short/simple way to say "immigrant who illegaly entered the country" as that would be verbose to say everytime. "Undocumented" just sounds like the person in question is there legally but just lost their documents on the way. Perhaps "unauthorized" is a compromise, but I do not know the frequency of the term in RSs.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 21:49, 27 May 2021 (UTC)


 * The main difficulty I have with the term 'undocumented immigrant' for the purposes of this article is that it is a US-centric term. Its use outside the United States is extremely uncommon. This article should represent a worldwide view on the subject, not focus on an American perspective. Unless the term becomes common place worldwide, it introduces undue weight in the article. Local Variable (talk) 04:39, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: LIBR 1 Working with Sources
— Assignment last updated by Kdavis25 (talk) 22:52, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

source?
Sorry if I do not understand how to use this, precisely. Didn't want to edit. This seems like a biased statement and has no source.

"Some campaigns discourage the use of the term illegal immigrant, generally based on the argument that the act of immigrating illegally does not make the people themselves illegal, but rather they are "people who have immigrated illegally." 172.116.60.189 (talk) 06:38, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: LIBR 1 Working with Sources M
— Assignment last updated by Kdavis25 (talk) 21:32, 15 December 2023 (UTC)