If we are to presume that there is a stigma attached to the word, then, we must surely apply that imputation to everybody who has ever come to these United States. Among the panoply of forms that USCIS offers on its website are a “Petition for Alien Relative,” a “Petition for Alien Fiancé(e),” an “Immigration Petition for Alien Worker,” an “Immigrant Petition by Alien Entrepreneur,” “Form AR-11, Alien’s Change of Address Card,” and an “Inter-Agency Alien Witness and Informant Record.” The term for anyone who is moving “in immediate and continuous transit through the United States, with or without a visa”? A “Transit Alien,” of course. Those who are merely visiting or are on temporary visas are “non-immigrant aliens,” while those who live here permanently are labeled “permanent resident aliens” and, until such time as they can be naturalized, are obliged to carry upon their persons small green cards with their “Alien Registration Number” emblazoned onto the front. All in all, the word appears more than 23,000 times on USCIS’s website, and 34 times just within its glossary. Should we not begin to wonder whether those objecting to the appellation are in fact objecting to the clarity of language itself? I am “resident” here, my residency is “permanent,” and, being currently a British and not an American citizen, I am an “alien.” The government thus describes me as a “permanent resident alien.” What, pray, is there to dislike?

Lamenting the manner in which we discuss immigration, the celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred has gone on record recommending that the word “alien” be applied only to those “from outer space.” Let us presume for the sake of a silly argument that we were to indulge her. What next? Unless we were also intending both to throw open the borders of the United States to all and sundry and to completely eliminate the distinction between citizens and non-citizens as well, we would be sorely in need of a new word to describe those who are physically present in the United States but who are not yet part of the American polity. This is a big, welcoming, and leveling sort of country, and one that exhibits a remarkable genius for assimilating people from all walks of life. But it is not so hot a melting pot that all who walk over its borders are immediately invited into the club. We do not invite holidaymakers enjoying their fortnight’s vacation to Disney World to vote in elections, serve on juries, and submit 1040s the following April. Given this, how might we describe their position?

Were we to grant Allred’s request, we would be depriving ourselves of a means by which to answer some important questions — among them, “Who here is expected to pay taxes?”; “Who must sign up for the draft?”; “Who may serve in government?”; and “In whose name is the government instituted?” In order to maintain the important distinctions that afford us the answers to these questions, we have elected to apply everyday words to the law and to the culture — words that include “legal” and “illegal”; “citizen” and “alien”; “resident” and “non-resident”; and “permanent” and “temporary.” One might well consider that, as it relates to immigration policy, the law is presently an ass. But to subordinate our language to that belief is infinitely more problematic. There is a reason that government in George Orwell’s 1984 heralded “Newspeak” as “the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year,” and that is that doing so allowed it to squeeze the nuance out of important discussions and to shrink the number of available thoughts that the citizenry might express. In other words, to circumvent and shut down debate.