A Milestone in the Discussion of Immigration: The Associated Press to Stop Using "Illegal Immigrant"

A peaceful demonstration in support of immigration reform.

One of the articles we read for class, Dropping the Hyphen? Becoming Latin(a)-American through Racialized Assimilation by Tanya Golash-Boza talks in some depth about how Latino and Latina immigrants label themselves and the reasons for these labels. In essence, the article talks about how using a hyphenated identity such as “Mexican-American” or “Colombian-American” tends to psychologically separate those using hyphenated names from people who identify simply as “American,” and more to the point, continued use of a hyphenated identity in subsequent generations is often a side-effect of racial discrimination encountered in a particular community. 

Recently the Associated Press and several other major news organizations, though notably not the New York Times, have removed the terms “illegal immigrant” and pejorative “illegal” from their style guides when referring to people who have immigrated to the United States illegally. As this article on Colorlines, a news website focussing on racial issues discusses, this move signals an important change in the mass media’s rhetoric regarding the immigration of people from Latin-American countries. With luck, the move away from the divisive term “illegal” will alleviate some of the widespread racist attitudes towards immigrants in this country and lead more of them to drop the hyphen, so to speak.

While perhaps not always intentional, though in some cases it certainly is, the use of the term “illegal immigrant” instead of “person” subtly dehumanizes the person being discussed. This ties rather directly back into the themes of “Dropping the Hyphen?” By making “illegal immigrant” the name by which we refer to people, it makes “illegal” the most important attribute about them, with “immigrant” closely following it to reinforce the idea that they are not from here; that they are not us. This serves to enable discrimination against a group that is unfortunately easily identified as non-white where those making policies and decisions regarding immigration in this country are still by-and-large white. It is through this path that the words we use to describe people affects public opinion on those people. 

The Associated Press’ decision to finally stop using these terms is something of a milestone in the discussion of immigration in the United States not because it will necessarily change the discussion overnight, but because it follows a long term trend among other news agencies that reprint Associated Press articles to edit those articles to not call people illegal immigrants. News agencies are notoriously slow to change their outlooks and policies, partially to maintain consistency in their reporting, which likely means that public pressure to make this change has been growing quite strong. As pressure wells up to make policy changes like this and policies change, the prevalence of terms like “illegal” will begin to drop, giving less fuel to the xenophobic sentiment that pervades the discussion of immigration in this country.

There is still a long way to go, however. Noted rich old white guy, John McCain, the Republican Senator from Arizona, has stated publicly in the wake of the Associated Press’ announcement that he will not stop using the term “illegal” to refer to those who have entered the United States illegally. McCain’s opinions in this regard do not seem terribly uncommon, as evinced by the New York Times’ continued use of “illegal immigrant” despite increasingly vocal popular pressure to change its policy. The all-too-common view that immigrants in this country illegally are criminals is slowly dissipating, but old habits die hard. Changing how we talk about those habits should help them die faster, which I can only hope to help into its shallow, hastily dug grave.