[Vision2020] immigration: comment to RVcowboy

[Melynda Huskey]

rvrcowboy wrote:
> Those who come across the border illegally are aliens and thus, "illegal
> alien" is the proper term.  There are many aliens here in this country who
> did not enter illegally but have stayed past their visa expiration, or
> student permit, or whatever.  These people may be rightly called
> "undocumented aliens" because they did not begin their time here illegally.
>   
"Alien" simply means a person who is not a citizen or national, a 
foreigner.  It derives from the Latin word alius, which means "other."  
A good many "aliens" are actually permanent legal residents of the U.S. 
who have not relinquished their citizenship in their country of origin.  
Some aliens are citizens.  Others lack documentation permitting them to 
live and work in the U.S.--hence, "undocumented."  If anything, 
"illegal" is an ungrammatical construction in this context--an alien 
cannot be illegal, although his or her presence in the U.S. might be.

For an excellent, non-partisan overview of U.S. immigration policy from 
the foundational (and fundamentally racist) Naturalization Act of 1790 
through the present day, I recommend

http://www.closeup.org/immigrat.htm#overview

with the caveat that I think their external links are heavy on 
anti-intellectual organizations like English-First.   Still, it's very 
clear on the fact that U.S. immigration law has always been 
predominantly an instrument of racist social policy, from the Alien and 
Sedition Act to the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Asiatic Barred Zone 
Act, with its purposeful loophole permitting the immigration of whites.

Melynda Huskey