![]() Then came Coe, whose view of the political landscape was as preternatural as Corona, although she saw a far darker scenario before her. The term “illegal immigrant” took its place. The strategy worked: “illegal alien” began to decline in usage after President Reagan signed a 1986 amnesty that legalized more than 3 million formally undocumented immigrants. “Illegal alien” remained the term du jour in the American mainstream through the 1970s and 1980s, but Corona and others always pushed back with softer describers such as “unauthorized” or the well-worn refrain “no human being is illegal.” The paper used “illegal alien” in news stories as recently as the early 2000s.Ĭorona’s advocacy, however, sparked a radical change in how Latinos and liberals thought of undocumented immigrants and the language we use for them. “We told them that we couldn’t understand The Times saying that it wanted to relate to the Chicano community and that it regretted the death of Ruben Salazar and at the same time using inflammatory terms such as ‘illegal aliens.’”Ĭhandler promised that The Times would stop using it. “We stressed that such a term fed the hysteria,” Corona told Garcia. Corona even took on Otis Chandler, the legendary former publisher of this paper, to the point where Chandler agreed to a meeting over The Times’ continued printing of the offending words. “People who came from Mexico without papers were being exploited and demeaned, and it was his own sense of humanity that no one should be considered illegal.”Ĭorona angered the Chicano and Anglo political establishment alike with his campaigns to cancel “illegal alien.” Cesar Chavez sicced his lawyer on Corona’s group, Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, after they picketed an anti-illegal immigration action blessed by Chavez. Garcia, who published a book-length interview with Corona about his life in 1994. “He knew how devastating a term like that was,” said UC Santa Barbara professor Mario T. How language shapes immigration policy.īut even “illegal aliens” wasn’t good enough for Corona. The Biden administration plans to drop ‘alien’ from use. Reform advocates have argued that ‘illegal alien’ dehumanizes migrants. But their legacy looms large in the debate over “illegal alien.” It was their shared linguistic cudgel to advance their respective causes.Įntertainment & Arts From ‘alien’ to ‘noncitizen’: Why the Biden word change matters in the immigration debate But the term didn’t truly take off as part of our culture wars until it caught the attention of California’s two most prophetic voices in the state’s eternal, existential debate over illegal immigration.īert Corona and Barbara Coe passed away long ago - he in 2001, she in 2013. “Illegal alien” has existed in the legal realm for decades, and colloquially dates back in the United States to the 1880s, when it was Chinese, Jews and Italians we were trying to keep out. ![]() A dust-up over language will seem like afternoon tea once those debates get going. It’s a test balloon for the rancor to come as President Biden tries to push through the first immigration amnesty in 35 years. ![]() The move has triggered expected responses from the Left and Right - the former applauds the move as a humanistic touch after four years of Trumpian ugliness, while the latter cries PC Reconquista.
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