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Thanksgiving: The Day Americans Welcomed “Illegal Aliens” From Europe

And how these same “aliens” vilify new ones

Andrea
Thought Thinkers
5 min readNov 26, 2024

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An image of a green alien from out of space with a Thanksgiving turkey and other Thanksgiving food.
AI-Generated by author on Canva Magic Studio

If you are irked by the use of the word “alien” in the title because it was applied to Europeans and not to current undocumented immigrants in the U.S. (aka. a lot of Brown and Black individuals), it likely means you feel comfortable dehumanizing one group of people and not another. In other words, you are probably a racist.

The use of the term “alien” in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to describe non-citizens of the United States makes my soul ache. As a first-generation immigrant and immigration attorney working on federal immigration policy, I have advocated altering the term because language is powerful.

The Biden administration acknowledged this and took action.

Shortly after taking office, his Administration issued guidance to change the language that agencies use from “illegal alien” to “undocumented non-citizen.” When this guidance was made public, a top official at Customs and Border Protection (CBP) stated:

We enforce our nation’s laws while also maintaining the dignity of every individual with whom we interact. The words we use matter and will serve

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Thought Thinkers
Thought Thinkers

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Andrea
Andrea

Written by Andrea

A multicultural mom, wife, daughter, immigration attorney, lover of mother nature, trying to make a difference one word at a time.

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