Illegal aliens is a topical subject term in the

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, that is, a phrase assigned by librarians to describe the content of books and other documents in a

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. The subject heading became a topic of political interest in the United States in 2016, when a decision by the

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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 Race Forward is a nonprofit racial justice organization with offices in Oakland, California, and New York City. Race Forward focuses on catalyzing movement building for racial justice. In partnership with communities, organizations, and sectors, ...

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

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, 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 ''

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

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and

Mike Braun Michael Kent Braun (; born March 24, 1954) is an American businessman and politician serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, junior United States Senate, United States senator from Indiana since 2019. A member of the Republican Par ...

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

''Change the Subject''
54-minute documentary about labels, libraries, and activism (2019)
''Words That Hurt: a Documentary''
11-minute video from the

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