WASHINGTON—Last June, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) filed a brief in a case in which a sixteen-year-old high school student in North Carolina was suspended for using the term “illegal alien” in a question to his teacher. Through his parents, the student was suing the school board for unlawful retaliation for the exercise of his First Amendment right to free speech. IRLI’s brief was in support of removing the suspension from the student’s record and clearing his name.
During a vocabulary quiz that included the word “alien,” the student raised his hand and asked if the teacher meant “space aliens or illegal aliens who need green cards.” A Hispanic fellow student, with whom the student who asked the question was friendly, jokingly pretended to be offended, though he really was not. The teacher, however, accusing the student of “racism,” took the matter up to administration, which—despite a plea by the student’s mother for a sit-down with the teacher and the mock-offended student to sort out the situation—decided to suspend the student who said “illegal alien” for three days.
In its brief, IRLI thoroughly shows that the terms “alien” and “illegal alien” are used throughout immigration law, and have precise meanings that are captured by no other terms. An “alien” is defined as a person who is neither a citizen nor a national of the United States. Thus, the new replacement term “noncitizen” being pushed by anti-borders activists is inaccurate. First, almost all people on Earth are citizens of some country, if not this one. Second, a person born in, for example, American Samoa is not an alien, but he is a “noncitizen,” since, by treaty, American Samoans born in that territory are American nationals—but not U.S. citizens—at birth.
As for “illegal,” it, too, is the only term. The replacement term “undocumented” is wildly inaccurate. Illegal aliens frequently have all sorts of documentation, including notices to appear at deportation hearings, consular matricula cards, fraudulent social security cards, and, in some states, drivers’ licenses. So “undocumented” wholly fails to capture the concept that “illegal aliens” precisely signifies: aliens who are in this country unlawfully.
As IRLI showed in its brief, the necessity of these terms is why they continue to be used in federal statutes and judicial opinions from the Supreme Court down, and why federal judges in courts around the country have vigorously and exhaustively defended their continued use. As these judges point out, there is nothing pejorative in the terms “alien” or even “illegal alien.” Rather, they are precise, un-emotive terms that bring needed clarity to the law.
This week, in settling the case, the school caved, apologizing for suspending the student and calling him “racist” for using the term “illegal alien”—thereby admitting that the term is not hate speech that violates the school’s continuing policy against such speech.
“It is all too clear that anti-borders activists don’t want people even to think about people from foreign countries being in this country unlawfully,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “So they push words like ‘undocumented,’ which avoids describing that unpopular reality. We are pleased that, once the school had the term ‘illegal alien’ thoroughly explained to them, it jumped off this particular anti-borders train, and allowed this descriptive, far from-offensive term to be used again by its students.”
The case is C.M. v. Davidson County Board of Education, No. 24-cv-380 (M.D.N.C.).
