Controversial terms: “Illegal Aliens”
Currently, there has been a lot of buzz around immigration laws and how to proceed with undocumented immigrants in the United States. Recently the issue of controversial Library of Congress Subject Headlines, and what to call “illegal immigrants” has been particularly in the spotlight. Library of congress headings are subject headings that make up a thesaurus of subject headings for use in bibliographical records. Because these subject headings compose a list of controlled vocabulary many libraries use the same terms, rather than creating something totally new. When searching libraries those are the terms that you need for a subject search typically. Currently the Library of Congress uses the heading “Illegal Alien” to describe undocumented immigrants. Recently this has received a lot of backlash from immigrant rights advocates. Thus, the Library attempted to change it to something more politically correct in their opinion, however conservatives in the House of Representatives pushed back, creating a provision that required the Library to keep the terms used in federal law.
The two main stakeholders in this argument are members of the Coalition for Immigration Reform, Equality and Dreamers and conservatives. The members of the Coalition petitioned for the Library of Congress to remove term “Illegal Aliens” from subject headings. They argued that both “illegal” and “Illegal Alien” are pejorative terms. They say alien is an unfair term and that a human being cannot be described as “illegal”. Many conservatives argue that the Library is simply trying to appeal to immigrant rights advocates. Republicans argue that the Library has taken sides and has gotten drawn into political arguments. They also say that other terms for this subject heading are illegally inaccurate. As mentioned earlier, the House decided in June that there would be a provision that the Library has to keep the terms used in federal law. This is the first time congress has ever intervened in a situation like this. Most other questionable subject headings have been changed with no pushback from Congress. For instance the term “negroes” was changed, as the article mentioned. Some other subject headings that have been changed without pushback were headings such as “gypsies” and “leprosy” to “Romanies” and “Hansen’s Disease”.
In my own opinion, I agree with the idea that we should not call a human being “illegal”. However we do need to find a term that is in fact accurate to their status. Otherwise, like Mr. Stein says, it “belittles immigration law”. The very definition of “alien” is a person belonging to a foreign country or nation. As an undocumented immigrant you do, by law, belong to a foreign country or nation. Although alien may seem pejorative, it is legally accurate. Although a human being themselves may not be “illegal” their status is. In my opinion we need to come up with some sort of compromise, some middle ground.
