Thread: House bill would remove the term 'alien' from federal law

House bill would remove the term 'alien' from federal law




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By Lydia Wheeler - 10/22/15 04:35 PM EDT
A bill introduced in the House on Thursday would change how immigrants are referred in federal laws.
Rep. Joaquín Castro (D-Texas) has introduced the Correcting Hurtful and Alienating Names in Government Expression Act. The bill would remove the term "illegal alien" and replace it with "undocumented foreign national” and keep executive branch agencies from using “alien” or "illegal alien" in signage and literature.



"America is a nation of immigrants, yet our federal government continues to use terms that dehumanize and ostracize those in our society who happen to have been born elsewhere," Castro said in a release."Regardless of status, immigrants to our nation are first and foremost human beings. Removing the term 'alien' from our federal laws shows respect to our shared heritage and to the hundreds of millions of descendants of immigrants who call America home."
Congress has passed similar legislation before to remove offensive language from federal law, including the 21st Century Language Act, which removed the term “lunatic,” and Rosa's Law, which removed the term “mentally retarded."
"Words matter, particularly in the context of an issue as contentious as immigration," Castro said.
"Discontinuing our use of the term 'alien' will help lessen the prejudice and vitriol that for too long have poisoned our nation's discussions around immigration reform," he added.

http://thehill.com/regulation/legisl...in-federal-law

A federal appeals court coined the term “illegal alien” in 1950

I am sure that his momma is proud.

Indeed, he, along with his twin, Joaquin, currently running for Congress, learned their politics on their mother’s knee and in the streets of San Antonio. Their mother, Rosie helped found a radical, anti-white, socialist Chicano party called La Raza Unida (literally “The Race United”) that sought to create a separate country—Aztlan—in the Southwest.

Today she helps manage her sons’ political careers, after a storied career of her own as a community activist and a stint as San Antonio Housing Authority ombudsman.

http://www.alipac.us/f9/julian-castr...-unida-263574/

The word alien originates in all dialogue about foreigners during the creation of the US Constitution and other early American political speech. It's a good word, an important word, and a word that is part of our language and one which we need to keep in our language and thus in our law.

by BOB PRICE
25 Oct 2015
4,816 comments

U.S. Representative Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) believes it is time to make the elimination of the legal term used to describe people from another country, “Alien,” from our law books. Castro compared the term that has been used for decades to describe the immigration status of people entering this country legally or illegally to the words “lunatic” and “mentally retarded.”

Castro believes the term “alien” is used to “dehumanize and ostracize” people who are born elsewhere, according to a San Antonio Express report on Thursday. “Regardless of status, immigrants to our nation are first and foremost human beings,” said Castro, D-San Antonio.

Castro appears to be referencing the use of the word alien by Hollywood to describe fictional characters from other planets. However, Merriam-Webster dictionary would disagree with the San Antonio Congressman’s definition. The renowned dictionary defines the term “alien” as meaning:

1. not familiar or like other things you have known : different from what you are used to
2. from another country
3. too different from something to be acceptable or suitable
Nowhere in their definition do they reference anything that is other than human.

The term “alien” has been used in income tax law and immigration law for decades to differentiate people who have come to the United States from another country by one means or another. In a paper published by Charleston College, the writer discusses the definitions in law of nonresident alien and resident alien as used for immigration status. Nonresident alien would be a person, not a space creature, who has been admitted to the U.S. for a temporary stay. A resident alien is described as an immigrant who has been granted an indefinite permission to live and work in the United States. That person has been granted a “green card.” The paper also references the tax reporting consequences for nonresident aliens and resident aliens.

When driving north from the Texas/Mexico one cannot help but notice signs advising “Smuggling Illegal Aliens is a Crime.” These signs are not posted by any group that might be classified as an angry hate group or militia. Instead, they are posted by the United States federal government at the entrances to U.S. Border Patrol inland checkpoints. They are not advising Texans about crimes involving the transportation of extraterrestrial creatures. They are simply referring to the immigration status of individuals who have entered the country without inspection.

Castro has chosen to spend his valuable time as a U.S. Representative introducing this problem that virtually no one is concerned about. His proposed legislation would remove the words “alien” and “illegal alien” from the government’s lexicon. Of course, the legislation has no possibility of going anywhere given the current makeup of Congress, but it appears to make him and a few others feel good.

“Discontinuing our use of the term ‘alien’ will help lessen the prejudice and vitriol that for too long have poisoned our nation’s discussions around immigration reform,” Castro said.

Castro’s position ignores the fact that it is the behavior of the illegal alien that upsets the majority of Americans, not the label attached. Castro is, once again, chasing a rainbow of political correctness instead of working on actually solving the problem of securing the border and stopping the abuses of these people he claims to care so much about.

http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2015/...onal-priority/

I can't even imagine such a bill seeing the light of day on the House floor. Of course I shouldn't say that because nothing our idiot Congress does would surprise me. Heck, wouldn't it be something if they just did a voice vote and sailed this thing through? Well, hopefully it'll never get out of committee.

The irony...

The word alien is in the title of the bill...

ALIPAC Adopts 'Illegal Invader' To Replace 'Illegal Immigrant' In Protest Against AP Change

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3021197.html