Joe Biden scraps 'alien' from US laws, asks agencies to call migrants 'non-citizens'

In a significant change of the previous immigration policy of the country, the United States President Joe Biden’s administration has scrapped the words “alien” and “illegal alien” to refer to migrants. Instead, now US laws would refer to them as “noncitizen” and “integration.” As per the NBC News report, the Biden administration has asked the heads of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to update their respective terminology “in response to the vision set by the administration."

A memo to the agencies’ leaders dated April 19 says that the government enforces US laws “while also maintaining the dignity of every individual with whom we interact.” It further laid emphasis on the impact of words used for those who are in custody and thus “we will serve to further confer the dignity” of such individuals. The new words suggested by the Biden administration are described as “preferred terminology” and “inclusive language”.

The changes relayed in the memo dated Monday are considered guidance but will reportedly be applied to agency outreach, internal documents and communications with stakeholders, partners and even the general public language. As per the report, the responsibility of implementing the update of vocabulary lies with CBP and ICE leaders as the memo asked for the agencies to “set a tone and example” for the United States as well as its partners. Apart from scraping ‘alien’, other changes include replacing unaccompanied alien children" with "noncitizen unaccompanied children" and "assimilation" with integration or civic integration.

Instead of “alienage” it would be “non-citizenship”, “immigrant assimilation" would change to "immigrant integration, “undocumented or illegal alien” would change to “undocumented noncitizen or individual or migrant.”

Migrant surge at Mexico border

While Biden administration, which only took over the White House on January 20, made changes to make the country’s terminology more inclusive, it also witnessed a migrant surge at the US-Mexico border. Biden reversed most of the laws passed during the Trump era that also included deporting children seeking asylum in the United States and forcing the migrants to wait in Mexico as they made their case to stay in the US.

However, as per the Associated Press report, Biden lacked on-ground planning to address the long-term issues that budded from his reversal of policies. Career immigration officials had even warned that there could be a surge after November presidential elections along with the news that Trump’s policies would be reversed which was also termed ‘cruel’ by many. Now, Biden along with his cabinet members are on their heels to build up the capacity to care for thousands of migrants who are presently in federal custody, with more likely on their way.

Image credits: AP