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Thursday, April 4, 2013
News AP drops "illegal" immigrant
Posted By Ana McKenzie on Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 10:07 AM
The largest news-gathering outlet in the world has opted to exclude the term "illegal immigrant" in its stylebook, which most U.S. newspapers and magazines follow. Unaccepted terms now also include "illegal alien," "illegals," "an illegal" or "undocumented."
Acceptable variations are entering a country "illegally or without legal permission."
According to Associated Press Vice President and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll:
The discussions on this topic have been wide-ranging and include many people from many walks of life. (Earlier, they led us to reject descriptions such as "undocumented," despite ardent support from some quarters, because it is not precise. A person may have plenty of documents, just not the ones required for legal residence.)Those discussions continued even after AP affirmed "illegal immigrant" as the best use, for two reasons.
A number of people felt that "illegal immigrant" was the best choice at the time. They also believed the always-evolving English language might soon yield a different choice and we should stay in the conversation.
Immigration advocacy groups have tried for years to stop newspapers and magazines from referring to people as "illegal." Locally, the Latin American Coalition's Drop the "I" Word campaign convinced some media outlets, though not most, including the Charlotte Observer, to stray from AP style and avoid the term.Creative Loafing signed the campaign last July.
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