2 Apr 2021
President Joe Biden’s United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is removing the term “alien” to refer to foreign nationals in the U.S. from the agency’s policy manual.
USCIS officials seemingly confirmed this week that the agency’s policy manual will no longer include the term “alien” to describe foreign nationals in the U.S. and instead will feature “more inclusive language.”
The term “alien” is regularly used in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 to describe foreign nationals living in the U.S. Civil Rights icon former Rep. Barbara Jordan (D-TX) also used the term “alien” to describe foreign nationals when she led a legislative coalition to reduce overall legal immigration levels in the mid-1990s.