The New York Times editorial board argued in favor of retiring the term “alien” from immigration legislation and official federal documents, explaining that there is “no compelling reason to keep a hostile term in the law that sets out how immigrants are welcomed into the country.”

Although many style guides used by media organizations discourage the use of terms like “illegals” and “aliens,” conservative media figures nonetheless have continued to make use of -- and even praise -- the use of such slurs, going as far as to say that hearing the term is “gratifying.”

In an October 20 editorial The New York Times wrote that although removing the term from official government use may seem “like a trivial part of immigration reform ... words, and their evolution, matter greatly in fraught policy debates.” Writing that there is “no compelling reason to keep a hostile term in the law that sets out how immigrants are welcomed into the country,” The Times quoted Muzaffar Chishti, the director of the Migration Policy Institute at New York University School of Law, who noted that such rhetoric is often used to “demonize a community”:

Lawmakers probably meant no harm when they codified the term “alien” into the landmark 1952 bill that remains the basis of America's immigration system. Since then, “alien” has found its way into many parts of the statute: foreigners granted temporary work permits are “non-permanent resident aliens”; those who get green cards by making investments in American businesses are “alien entrepreneurs”; Nobel laureates and pop stars who want to make America home can apply to become “aliens of extraordinary ability.” 

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Recognizing how dehumanizing the term is to many immigrants, officials in California recently took commendable steps to phase it out. In August, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that deletes the term from the state's labor code. Last month, the California Republican Party adopted a new platform that does not include the term “illegal alien,” saying it wanted to steer clear of the vitriolic rhetoric that the presidential candidate Donald Trump has injected into the 2016 race. 

Several news organizations have adopted policies discouraging its use in reporting about immigrants. According to a review by the Pew Research Center in 2013, the use of the term in newspaper articles dropped sharply between 2007 and 2013. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that administers immigration benefits, has removed the word from some documents, including green cards.  

But the term remains firmly embedded in conservative discourse, used by Republicans to appeal to the xenophobic crowd. Mr. Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate, uses the term 12 times in his ruinous immigration plan, which calls for the mass deportation of millions of unauthorized immigrants and proposes that Washington bill Mexico to build a wall along the border. It was often uttered by former Gov. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, whose idiotic immigration plan called for “self-deportation” by unauthorized immigrants. 

“If you want to demonize a community, you use words that demonize,” said Muzaffar Chishti, the director of the Migration Policy Institute at New York University School of Law. “Alien is more demonizing than immigrant.”

Semantics may seem like a trivial part of immigration reform, but words, and their evolution, matter greatly in fraught policy debates.  

States that use the word alien in their laws should consider following California's lead. The federal government should scrub it from official documents where possible. In the end, though, it will be up to Congress to recognize that there is no compelling reason to keep a hostile term in the law that sets out how immigrants are welcomed into the country.