In political discourse on immigration, one quickly arrives at a linguistic crossroads—or, rather, a wild lexical highway junction. An abundance of terms exists in different contexts and political circles: migrant, refugee, alien, noncitizen, undocumented, or illegal, with each term carrying different connotations. We also talk about immigration using many different metaphors, often evoking imagery of moving liquid and natural disasters: immigrants arrive in floods, influxes, waves and even torrents.
The lexicon of immigration is suffused with subjectivity, both in the figurative language used to describe migration trends and in the labels applied to migrants themselves. Immigration terms vastly differ across the political spectrum, with right-wing language often gravitating towards chaos, violence or individual responsibility, and left-wing language often evoking systemic failures and humanitarian solutions instead. Our vocabulary, even colloquially, reflects—and shapes—how we perceive objective facts about immigration in the United States.
In Trump’s second presidency, the federal government has utilized language as a powerful tool in its nationwide immigration crackdown. In March 2025, acting ICE director Todd Lyons issued an official memo updating the federal lexicon of immigration, directing governmental officials to use the terms “illegal alien,” “foreign student” and “asylum applicant” instead of “undocumented noncitizen,” “international student” and “asylum seeker,” respectively. In contrast, the Biden administration favored “noncitizen” or “undocumented,” both in official government official policy and informal communications. The new administration’s focus on maintaining hostile terminology eerily echoes Newspeak, the fictional language in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, where the government purposefully manipulates the vocabulary to mold public opinion.
Researchers have studied the effects of immigration vocabulary on public attitudes and on legal decision making, and have found that both metaphors and technical terminology influence attitudes and decision-making. In 2011 study, Fordham University legal scholars cited the three main areas of immigration policy debate of that year—border security, guestworker programs, and amnesty for undocumented immigrants—as direct cognitive entailments (i.e., inferences that stem from an initial metaphor) of the Supreme Court’s top three most-used conceptual metaphors about immigration—immigrants as a “flood,” immigrants as “aliens” and immigration as an “invasion.”
In a 2024 study, scholars from the American Immigration Lawyers Association tracked how terminology usage in different circuits of the U.S. Courts of Appeals correlated with the verdicts of over 500 immigration cases, and they found that in both conservative- and liberal-leaning courts, usage of the term “noncitizen” instead of “alien” was associated with proportionally more favorable outcomes. Language goes beyond just reflecting liberal or conservative immigration ideology; it actually imperceptibly shapes the perceptions and political beliefs we assume are grounded purely in objective facts.
Referring to undocumented immigrants as “illegal aliens,” or even “illegal immigrants,” shifts the focus away from systemic reform and points toward individual culpability as the solution for U.S. immigration problems. An important nuance exists between the verb and the noun; there is a collocational difference between the action of illegally immigrating, as part of a larger issue, and defining a human as an illegal immigrant, as if individuals could be responsible for a systemic failure. Any one person’s existence can’t be “illegal,” and the usage of “illegal immigrant” does more harm to the immigration system than good: it suggests that punitive measures, like ICE’s violent interior removal operations, will solve our national immigration problems. In reality, genuine systemic reform to streamline the pathway to legal citizenship for arriving migrants and long-term undocumented residents would prove much more effective in actually reducing the dangers of illegal immigration than deporting noncriminal members of the workforce, who make up a staggering 84% of ICE arrests since Trump’s second inauguration.
Proponents of the labels “illegal immigrant” or “illegal alien” cite its clarity and precision, but this argument falters under scrutiny. As Northwest Immigrant Rights Project board member Monika Kashyap articulates, “[the term ‘illegal immigrant’] is legally inaccurate because it is akin to calling a criminal defendant ‘guilty’ before a verdict is rendered; it is legally imprecise because it implies finality even though immigration status is fluid and, depending on individual circumstances, can be adjusted.” Moreover, when a term like “illegal immigrant” carries a clear political bias (and a derogatory, violent connotation given the public brutality of ICE), continuing to defend its semantic value reflects an indifference to, or even endorsement of, the dehumanizing treatment of noncitizens than it reflects one’s commitment to precise language.
The term “undocumented immigrant” emphasizes the reality that obtaining or renewing necessary paperwork is a systemic impracticability for millions of hardworking, tax-paying immigrants. The descriptor “undocumented” points us toward a more ethical solution than mass deportation: providing viable federal pathways for immigrants to secure proper documentation and governmental protections.
We must also be mindful of the casual ways in which we talk about migration trends. While colloquial language may seem innocuous, equating immigrants to natural disasters using words like “flood” or “wave” constructs a violent perception of immigration in general that has little to do with reality and everything to do with the nuances of our lexicon. Neutral and accurate verbs like migrate, travel, or arrive accurately portray movement without emotional charge. How we conceptualize abstract political issues molds what we think of them; language is the most fundamental (and insidious) hotbed for bias.
Interrogating the language of immigration can help dismantle the kinds of hateful rhetoric that fuel our broken immigration system while laying the groundwork for more humanitarian and productive immigration policy. Of course, language means little without action: vocabulary matters because it reflects and influences ideology, which dictates legislation that tangibly affects the lives of millions of immigrants. Using inclusive and accurate terminology is just the first step as we work towards a safer future for all immigrants—and all Americans—through real policy and reform.
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