Why are we allowing the US to call illegal immigrants “illegal aliens”?

[KimGym]

I find this absolutely sickening!!!! It’s a disgraceful term to use and I feel as though if the US are going to use this disgusting terminology, it should at the very least, be censored in other countries. It is so disrespectful and dehumanising. It’s this sort of language that leads people (hopefully only those who have lacked a basic education) to deem immigrants to be sub human, and paves the way for public acceptance of them being treated in a sub human manner. AIBU to think this is totally abhorrant?

You obviously bring your own connotations to the word alien, I read it just as it is defined, it has no particular derogatory meaning to me. Would foreigners be better?

The word Native is now outdated and I think maybe offensive these days.
It's First Nations.

Alien infers freakish, odd, another completely separate species. It is not at all on par with immigrant or foreigner, what the fuck!?

I honestly feel like I’ve entered a parallel universe reading this thread. These people are human who happen to have a different heritage or skin colour, not aliens.

"Alien" means from another country.
It has been co-opted to be used to describe, as yet unproven, extraterristrial life forms. I don't think you can criticise another country for contiuing to use a word in its orginal form.

Aren't WASPY Americans the ACTUAL aliens?

Would Melania Trump be referred to as an Alien or an immigrant? I haven’t heard anyone calling her one

Absolutely agree

Well, quite; and in North America that has been an emically meaningful development and not the sort of etically-driven one (oh the irony) that the OP would seem to want.

What's that got to do with a dictionary definition?

I don't like Trump any more than the average brit and I am largely indifferent about his wife, but Melania Trump is a legal first generation immigrant and it is widely known that she was born in another country (first line of her wiki), so I'm not really sure what that has to do with anything.

It makes no difference what the actual definition is. Alien is widely used to refer to creatures from outer space, and that’s what 99.9% of people’s minds jump to.

All it means is “Any person who is not a citizen or a national of the United States”.

Its no big deal and nothing to get offended over.

Sorry I think I was meant to reply to another poster!

My point was if it’s acceptable to call people Aliens (illegal, student, citizen etc) why doesn’t Melania get called one? Because it’s offensive

Alien =/= immigrant though

The biggest issue in America, regarding ICE, is the "illegal" bit is actually just being used for "anyone who looks a bit different"

Except that's literally what alien means in this situation

Alien = not from the USA

Not alien = from another planet and looking different

If we edited the section in Melania trumps wiki, to say “alien” in there, how long do you think it would be before it was changed back?

Why should we "allow" it? Lol. What are you going to do about it?

It's not what 99.9% of people's minds jump to though

Plenty of people, as evidenced here, know that alien in this context means "from another country" and as this is being said in the USA where it's the common term, an even higher % will understand it with the right context

All spastic means is someone who has involuntarily muscle contractions, that still doesn’t mean it’s now not considered offensive because people used the word in a derogatory manner.

What about the well known racial descriptors that are now considered offensive? Should they get used as well, after all, they are what they say they are. Why don’t they use them when describing immigrants? Just a bit too overt?

It literally means foreign. You must have a very vivid imagination or are completely ignorant to what the word actually means.

It’s not about the meaning as such, it’s about the words connotations.

It’s a legal term, they’ve always used it even when I had a student visa in the 90s! It’s a factual term, meaning a non- US citizen, it doesn’t have “connotations”.

I'm American, living in NY. No one I know uses that term, in fact, no-one says illegal immigrant either. People use the term 'undocumented', but I prefer to say 'someone who doesn't have papers'.

Plenty of signs around saying: 'no human is illegal', and things like that.

It's a standard use of the word in the US.

But you haven’t explained why “immigrant” is better than “alien”. So ‘do better’ doesn’t help yet.

The connotations of the word alien are clearly unpleasant

Yes, to you.

But if I were to read all the negative UK press about aliens/immigrants, I’d see the word “immigrants” used more than “alien” by 100 to 1.

So clearly we should ‘do better’ than to cling to that word immigrant when we could be using a word that isn’t widely used pejoratively here… like alien.

Different countries, different word usages.

"Spastic" is still used as a medical term and is also considered to me different levels of offensiveness in different English speaking countries. We have a shared base language not a shared culture, and we need to remember this.