Illegal aliens was a topical subject term in the Library of Congress Subject Headings thesaurus, a phrase assigned by librarians to describe the content of resources in a library catalog relating to undocumented immigration. The subject heading became a topic of political interest in the United States in 2016, when a decision by the Library of Congress to revise the heading and replace it with the terms Noncitizens and Unauthorized immigration was opposed by congressional Republicans. In 2021, the Illegal aliens subject headings were replaced with two headings, Noncitizens and Illegal immigration.
The subject heading Aliens, Illegal was established by the Library of Congress in 1980 and revised to Illegal aliens in 1993. [1]
The subject heading incorporates references from non-preferred forms of the term including Aliens--Legal status, laws, etc.; Aliens, Illegal; Illegal aliens--Legal status, laws, etc.; Illegal immigrants; Illegal immigration; and Undocumented aliens. It also references related terms such as Alien detention centers and Human smuggling. Associated headings include Children of illegal aliens and Women illegal aliens. [2]
In 2010, racial justice organization Race Forward debuted a campaign to "Drop the I-Word," an effort to ask media sources to no longer use the word "illegal" when referring to undocumented immigrants, arguing that using the word to describe people was dehumanizing, racially charged, and legally inaccurate. [3] Multiple news outlets stopped using "illegal" to describe people in the early 2010s, including the Associated Press. [4] [5]
Student activists at Dartmouth College, including the Dartmouth Coalition for Immigration Reform, Equality and DREAMERs (CoFIRED), issued a series of racial justice demands to the Dartmouth administration in February 2014, one of which requested the term Illegal aliens not be used in the library's catalog. [6] Together with Dartmouth librarians, the students from CoFIRED submitted a formal request to the Library of Congress in the summer of 2014 for the heading to be revised to Undocumented immigrants. [1] In February 2015, the Library of Congress announced it would not change the heading, in part because resources such as Black's Law Dictionary used "Illegal aliens" as an established term. [1]
Librarian activists continued to gather support to ask for the heading's revision. [1] [4] The Council of the American Library Association passed a resolution in January 2016 calling the term "dehumanizing, offensive, inflammatory, and even a racial slur" and urging the Library of Congress to change the subject heading to Undocumented immigrants. [1] [7]
In March 2016, the Library of Congress announced that it would replace the heading with two new headings: Noncitizens and Unauthorized immigration. [8] [9] Following the announcement, Republican lawmakers made multiple attempts to block the revision of the subject heading, including the introduction of a bill by U.S. Representative Diane Black requiring the Library to retain the heading. [10] In June 2016, the House of Representatives added a provision to the 2017 appropriations bill for the legislative branch requiring the Library of Congress to retain the heading without revision. [11] While the final bill did not require LC to keep the "Illegal aliens" wording, LC was required "to make publicly available its process for changing or adding subject headings." [12]
The 2019 documentary film Change the Subject , about the students at Dartmouth College, was screened throughout the U.S. [13] [14]
Over forty libraries and library systems revised the heading in their local catalogs. [12] [15] [16]
On November 12, 2021, the Library of Congress Policy and Standards Division announced they would replace the term Aliens with Noncitizens and the term Illegal aliens with Illegal immigration. [17] [18] That change was implemented in December 2021. Reactions to the chosen terms were mixed, with a letter signed by Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Braun calling the decision "a politically-motivated and Orwellian attempt to manipulate and control language," [19] while some librarians expressed frustrations that the changed language remains dehumanizing. [20]
Sanford Berman is a librarian. He is known for radicalism, promoting alternative viewpoints in librarianship, and acting as a proactive information conduit to other librarians around the world. His vehicles of influence include public speaking, voluminous correspondence, and unsolicited "care packages" delivered via the U.S. Postal Service. Will Manley, columnist for the American Library Association (ALA) publication, American Libraries, has praised Berman: "He makes you proud to be a librarian."
Anchor baby is a term used to refer to a child born to a non-citizen mother in a country that has birthright citizenship which will therefore help the mother and other family members gain legal residency. In the U.S., the term is generally used as a derogatory reference to the supposed role of the child, who automatically qualifies as an American citizen under jus soli and the rights guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The term is also often used in the context of the debate over illegal immigration to the United States. A similar term, "passport baby", has been used in Canada for children born through so-called "maternity" or "birth tourism".
The Immigration Reform and Control Act was passed by the 99th United States Congress and signed into law by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on November 6, 1986.
In law, an alien is any person who is not a citizen or a national of a specific country, although definitions and terminology differ to some degree depending upon the continent or region. More generally, however, the term "alien" is perceived as synonymous with foreign national.
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, Division C of Pub. L. 104–208 (text)(PDF), 110 Stat. 3009-546, enacted September 30, 1996, made major changes to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). IIRIRA's changes became effective on April 1, 1997.
The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) comprise a thesaurus of subject headings, maintained by the United States Library of Congress, for use in bibliographic records. LC Subject Headings are an integral part of bibliographic control, which is the function by which libraries collect, organize, and disseminate documents. It was first published in 1898, a year after the publication of Library of Congress Classification (1897). The last print edition was published in 2016. Access to the continuously revised vocabulary is now available via subscription and free services.
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) is an anti-immigration think tank and a SPLC designated hate group. It favors far lower immigration numbers, and produces analyses to further those views. The CIS was founded by historian Otis L. Graham and eugenicist and white nationalist John Tanton. The organization was founded in 1985 as a spin-off from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, and is one of a number of anti-immigration organizations founded by Tanton, along with FAIR and NumbersUSA.
The Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 was a bill in the 109th United States Congress. It was passed by the United States House of Representatives on December 16, 2005, by a vote of 239 to 182, but did not pass the Senate. It was also known as the "Sensenbrenner Bill," for its sponsor in the House of Representatives, Wisconsin Republican Jim Sensenbrenner. The bill was the catalyst for the 2006 U.S. immigration reform protests and was the first piece of legislation passed by a house of Congress in the United States illegal immigration debate. Development and the effect of the bill was featured in "The Senate Speaks", Story 11 in How Democracy Works Now: Twelve Stories a documentary series from filmmaking team Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini.
Illegal immigration to the United States is the process of migrating into the United States in violation of US immigration laws. This can include foreign nationals (aliens) who have entered the United States unlawfully, as well as those who lawfully entered but then remained after the expiration of their visas, parole, TPS, etc. Illegal immigration has been a matter of intense debate in the United States since the 1980s.
The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act was a United States Senate bill introduced in the 109th Congress (2005–2006) by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PE) on April 7, 2006. Co-sponsors, who signed on the same day, were Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Sen. Mel Martínez (R-FL), Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS).
Illegal immigration is the migration of people into a country in violation of the immigration laws of that country or the continued residence without the legal right to live in that country. Illegal immigration tends to be financially upward, from poorer to richer countries. Illegal residence in another country creates the risk of detention, deportation, and/or other sanctions.
A Form I-766 employment authorization document or EAD card, known popularly as a work permit, is a document issued by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that provides temporary employment authorization to noncitizens in the United States.
Sanctuary city refers to municipal jurisdictions, typically in North America, that limit their cooperation with the national government's effort to enforce immigration law. Leaders of sanctuary cities say they want to reduce fear of deportation and possible family break-up among people who are in the country illegally, so that such people will be more willing to report crimes, use health and social services, and enroll their children in school. In the United States, municipal policies include prohibiting police or city employees from questioning people about their immigration status and refusing requests by national immigration authorities to detain people beyond their release date, if they were jailed for breaking local law. Such policies can be set expressly in law or observed in practice, but the designation "sanctuary city" does not have a precise legal definition. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated in 2018 that 564 U.S. jurisdictions, including states and municipalities, had adopted sanctuary policies.
The right of non-citizens to vote in the United States has historically been a contentious issue. Since 1997, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 has prohibited non-citizens from voting in federal elections, with the threat of fines, imprisonment, inadmissibility and deportation. Exempt from punishment is any noncitizen who, at the time of voting, had two natural or adoptive U.S. citizen parents, who began permanently living in the United States before turning 16 years old, and who reasonably believed that they were a citizen of the United States. At one point or another before 1926 40 states had non-citizens voting in elections. While federal law does not prohibit noncitizens from voting in state or local elections, no state has allowed noncitizens to vote in statewide elections since Arkansas became the last state to outlaw noncitizen voting in state elections in 1926. As of December 2022, at least thirteen local jurisdictions allow non-citizen voting, namely Winooski and Montpelier in Vermont, and eleven in Maryland near Washington, D.C. In 2023, D.C. itself started allowing local non-citizen voting. Additionally, the U.S. territories of American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands allow non-citizen US nationals to vote, a status granted to all people born in American Samoa.
Birthright generation is a term used by immigrant advocates to identify US-born citizens, who are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. It grants American citizenship to all babies born on American soil even if the child is born to one or both undocumented parents. Birthright citizenship may be also conferred either by jus soli or jus sanguinis. Under American law, any person born within the US, including the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands and subject to its jurisdiction is automatically granted US citizenship.
Deportation and removal from the United States occurs when the U.S. government orders a person to leave the country. In fiscal year 2014, Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted 315,943 removals. Criteria for deportations are set out in 8 U.S.C. § 1227.
Federal policy oversees and regulates immigration to the United States and citizenship of the United States. The United States Congress has authority over immigration policy in the United States, and it delegates enforcement to the Department of Homeland Security. Historically, the United States went through a period of loose immigration policy in the early-19th century followed by a period of strict immigration policy in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Policy areas related to the immigration process include visa policy, asylum policy, and naturalization policy. Policy areas related to illegal immigration include deferral policy and removal policy.
The U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 was a legislative bill that was proposed by President Joe Biden on his first day in office. It was formally introduced in the House by Representative Linda Sánchez. It died with the ending of the 117th Congress.
Change the Subject is a 2019 documentary film directed by Jill Baron and Sawyer Broadley. The film documents Dartmouth College students lobbying the Library of Congress to replace the term "Illegal aliens" with "Undocumented immigrants" in the Library of Congress Subject Headings. While ultimately unsuccessful, the efforts of the students have inspired individual libraries to replace the term.
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