Illegal aliens is a topical subject term in the

Library of Congress Subject Headings The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) comprise a thesaurus (in the information science sense, a controlled vocabulary) of subject headings, maintained by the United States Library of Congress, for use in bibliographic records. LC Subject ...

thesaurus A thesaurus (plural ''thesauri'' or ''thesauruses'') or synonym dictionary is a reference work for finding synonyms and sometimes antonyms of words. They are often used by writers to help find the best word to express an idea: Synonym dictionar ...

, that is, a phrase assigned by librarians to describe the content of books and other documents in a library catalog. The subject heading became a topic of political interest in the United States in 2016, when a decision by the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

to revise the heading and replace it with the terms "''unauthorized immigration''" and "''noncitizens''" was opposed by congressional Republicans.

Background

The subject heading "''Aliens, Illegal''" was established by the Library of Congress in 1980 and revised to "''Illegal aliens''" in 1993. The subject heading incorporates references from non-preferred forms of the term including "''Aliens--Legal status, laws, etc.''"; "''Aliens, Illegal''"; "''Illegal aliens--Legal status, laws, etc.''"; "''Illegal immigrants''"; "''Illegal immigration''"; and "''Undocumented aliens''". It also references related terms such as "''Alien detention centers''" and "''Human smuggling''". Associated headings include "''Children of illegal aliens''" and "''Women illegal aliens''."

Calls for different wording

In 2010, racial justice organization Race Forward debuted a campaign to "Drop the I-Word," an effort to ask media sources to no longer use the word "illegal" when referring to undocumented immigrants, arguing that using the word to describe people was dehumanizing, racially charged, and legally inaccurate. Multiple news outlets stopped using "illegal" to describe people in the early 2010s, including the

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. Student activists at

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

, including the Dartmouth Coalition for Immigration Reform, Equality and DREAMERs (CoFIRED), issued a series of racial justice demands to the Dartmouth administration in February 2014, one of which requested the term "Illegal aliens" not be used in the library's catalog. Together with Dartmouth librarians, the students from CoFIRED submitted a formal request to the Library of Congress in the summer of 2014 for the heading to be revised to "Undocumented immigrants". In February 2015, the Library of Congress announced it would not change the heading, in part because resources such as '' Black's Law Dictionary'' used "Illegal aliens" as an established term. Librarian activists continued to gather support to ask for the heading's revision. The Council of the

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passed a resolution in January 2016 calling the term "dehumanizing, offensive, inflammatory, and even a racial slur" and urging the Library of Congress to change the subject heading to "Undocumented immigrants".

2016 announcement and subsequent developments

In March 2016, the Library of Congress announced that it would replace the heading with two new headings: "Noncitizens" and "Unauthorized immigration". Following the announcement, Republican lawmakers made multiple attempts to block the revision of the subject heading, including the introduction of a bill by U.S. Representative

Diane Black Diane Lynn Black (née Warren; January 16, 1951) is an American politician who served as a U.S. Representative for from January 3, 2011, to January 3, 2019. The district includes several suburban and rural areas east of Nashville. A Republican, ...

requiring the Library to retain the heading. In June 2016, the House of Representatives added a provision to the 2017

appropriations bill An appropriation, also known as supply bill or spending bill, is a proposed law that authorizes the expenditure of government funds. It is a bill that sets money aside for specific spending. In some democracies, approval of the legislature is ne ...

for the legislative branch requiring the Library of Congress to retain the heading without revision. While the final bill did not require it to keep the "Illegal aliens" wording, it was required "to make publicly available its process for changing or adding subject headings". The 2019 documentary film ''

Change the Subject ''Change the Subject'' is a 2019 documentary film directed by Jill Baron and Sawyer Broadley. The film documents Dartmouth College students lobbying the Library of Congress to replace the term "Illegal aliens" with "Undocumented immigrants" in th ...

'', about the students at Dartmouth College, was screened throughout the U.S. Over forty libraries and library systems revised the heading in their local catalogs.

2021 revision

The Library of Congress Policy and Standards Division replaced the term "''Aliens''" with "''Noncitizens''" and the term "''Illegal aliens''" with "''Illegal immigration''" on November 12, 2021. Reactions to the chosen terms were mixed, with a letter signed by Senators

Ted Cruz Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz (; born December 22, 1970) is an American politician and attorney serving as the junior United States Senator from Texas since 2013. A member of the Republican Party, Cruz served as Solicitor General of Texas from ...

and

Mike Braun Michael Kent Braun (; born March 24, 1954) is an American businessman and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Indiana since 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he previously represented the 63rd district in the India ...

calling the decision "a politically-motivated and Orwellian attempt to manipulate and control language," while some librarians expressed frustrations that the changed language remains dehumanizing.

References

External links