"Illegal Alien" No More: The Biden Administration Drops the Label
This is a couple of days old, but I missed it. 
February 25, 2021
“Illegal Alien” No More: The Biden Administration Drops the Label
Tell us which language and policy changes should come next.
Daniel King
In a major milestone for immigrants’ rights activists seeking shifts in language and law, the Biden administration has dropped “illegal alien” from government communications, taking federal agencies out of the business of branding people—instead of actions—illegal. The move marks the culmination of the yearslong “Drop the I-Word” campaign, spearheaded by author and Mother Jones board member Rinku Sen. Her movement is widely credited with creating much of the groundwork for retiring the phrase.
The shift was made in an internal Homeland Security Department memo directing officials to replace “alien” with “noncitizen,” and “illegal” with “undocumented.”
“I feel real pride” in the change, Sen tells me. Biden’s decision wouldn’t have been possible, she says, if it weren’t for many broader changes first, especially in the media. “This would have been much harder for the administration to do if we hadn’t first changed most journalistic and some governmental practice on the I-word.” Many newsrooms including ours use “illegal” only to describe actions, and Sen had amplified that distinction. But she’d met heavy resistance from some newsrooms whose editors construed her pitch as a call for euphemistic substitution rather than a material improvement to accurate reporting.
more...
https://www.motherjones.com/media/2021/02/illegal-alien-no-more-the-biden-administration-drops-the-label/
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