What is the difference between illegal immigrants and undocumented immigrants

The main criticism of "illegal" and "alien" is based on the fact that only an act can be illegal whereas a person cannot be "illegal" or "criminal". Another argument against the use of "illegal immigrant" could be formulated through an examination of the definition of "illegal". According to Webster's Dictionary "illegal" means "contrary to law, unlawful" and similarly the most recent edition of the Merriam Webster Dictionary , defines "illegal" as "not according to or authorized by law; contrary to or forbidden by law.

Obviously none of these could be used to refer to a person. The widely adopted usage of "illegal migrant" has somehow been institutionalized by the U. Since the purpose here is not to analyze the creation of legal terminology in the United States, this section will conclude by illustrating an extreme by pointing to the fact that, strictly speaking, only an immigration judge in the United States can determine "illegality" Flores, Similar remarks could also be made about the term "illegal alien.

The problem with the word "alien" arises when it is combined with "illegal"; the term "illegal alien" could be criticized using the same arguments advanced against the use of "illegal immigrant".

Setting aside the linguistic and the legal meanings of "illegal immigrant", the issue of how this term is used to address the larger public remains. The media and political figures, as powerful actors who influence public opinion, create prejudices, and shape uninformed opinions especially in the case of socially sensitive issues , are most likely to use the most negatively charged terms when referring to undocumented migrants or issues related to irregular migration. We are all also aware of the fact that undocumented immigrants are like a disposable "tool", since they are the best and easiest scapegoat at times of national economic recession, yet they are greatly in demand and respectively tolerated, not prosecuted and even actively recruited during periods of industrial and agricultural boom when there is a need to supplement the work force Stoddard, The author stresses that: " By intentionally using words such as "illegal" or "clandestine" to refer to people, political attention in Europe has shifted from unbiased observation, description, and subsequent management of undocumented migration, to a strongly biased redefinition of a major part of international migration.

This redefinition depicts immigrants as a threat to the European Union and as criminals, not because of their nature per se but because of the mechanisms introduced to protect Europe against them. Some academics, however e. Polinard et al. Such an argument hardly reflects the media's reliability or its capacity to institute unbiased terminology, nor does it consider the consequences of allowing the media's preferences, as stimulated by public opinion, to determine linguistic usage in academia.

Here we will use one example to illustrate how easily and tenuously derogatory terms referring to undocumented migrants are promoted by the European Union, whether due to linguistic negligence or as part of an intentional strategy to inappropriately equate undocumented migration with criminal acts. The following words by the former Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs illustrate the reasoning of the highest echelons of migration management in the European Union and also indicate the way in which policies formulated to cope with irregular migration can be intrinsically biased precisely because of this perception of undocumented migration:.

The fight against trafficking in human beings and illegal immigration can only be effective if we set objectives and apply legal and administrative instruments at European Union level. The press release provides a neat summary of the traditional thinking on migration issues upheld by the Commission and the Council and requires some explanatory comments.

In the first place, there is an indisputable tendency to use the term "illegal" as the only correct term for addressing all forms of irregular migration the European Commission has institutionalized the expression "illegal resident" as the only way to refer to: "Any person who does not, or no longer, fulfill the conditions for presence in, or residence on the territory of a Member State of the European Union" EC, , without providing any rationale for selecting this expression over other possible alternatives.

The outcome of this linguistic preference is that all cases in which people deliberately or unwillingly remain in an irregular situation in the destination country such as, for example, remaining in the EU despite the country's denial of asylum, when conditions in the country of origin are unsafe are regarded as a criminal act. Since this is the case in the vast majority of EU texts where the issue of illegal migration is discussed, one can see the tendency to criminalize the act of residing in a state without the necessary documentation.

Moreover, this is done without considering provisional measures for assessing the cases in which an undocumented migrant has indeed broken an immigration law as opposed to the cases where the migrant has been a victim of a sluggish reception system that has, de facto, transformed him or her into either an undocumented worker during the asylum application's processing or into an irregular migrant after the application was rejected.

The latter case refers to the fact that undocumented work is a natural response to the length of time required for assessing an asylum application, which can last up to five or even seven years, during which time asylum seekers in most countries have no formal right to work.

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The Immigration Reform and Control Act of Only during the last third of the 20th century did we even begin to focus on managing migration from Mexico, and only in the past quarter-century have we gotten remotely serious about securing our southern border or restricting the employment of people who are here illegally.

Mexicans were effectively exempted from the prohibition on contract labor that marked the first major federal restriction on immigration. When head taxes and other entrance fees were imposed on immigrants in , Mexicans were again given a pass. And when the United States first implemented a literacy test for immigrants conducted in their native languages in , Mexicans were specifically exempted from this policy as well.

Most notably, when in the s the U. This substantial carve-out reflected concessions to agricultural employers.

But it was also a nod to business interests eager to keep markets open, as well as to the foreign-policy establishment, which worried about offending our neighbors.

These much-reviled quotas remained in place until , when the Hart-Celler Act replaced them with the framework that remains the basis of today's policy: non-discriminatory, formally equal treatment of all nations. But country-specific quotas were not immediately applied to the Western Hemisphere. The act provided for an annual ceiling of , immigrants for the entire region without country-specific limits, a policy that worked to the advantage of neighboring Mexico.

By contrast, nations outside our hemisphere were assigned annual quotas of 20, immigrants each. Only in was that 20,immigrant cap imposed on Western Hemisphere countries, finally ensuring formally equal treatment of all nations. Today, that number has increased to about 26,, and the annual per-country quotas remain in place.

But the legacy of a "Mexican exception" persists, and continues to subvert the principle of equal treatment of all nations upon which our immigration policy is nominally based. Thus, each year, we welcome many more legal immigrants from Mexico than from any other country.

In fiscal year , for example, These numbers in part reflect the second pillar of our post immigration policy: family unification. The law affords immediate relatives of U.

But Mexico's over-representation also reflects the fact that many of these legal immigrants are not actually new arrivals; rather, they are former illegals who were already living here and managed to get their status adjusted. Once these immigrants become citizens, they too can bring in immediate family members outside Mexico's annual quota. Throughout most of the previous century, agricultural interests in the South and the Southwest were the dominant forces pushing to exempt Mexico and the rest of the hemisphere from per-country immigration quotas.

Crucial to understanding this period is the Bracero Program, which began in in response to wartime shortages of agricultural laborers. The program involved the importation of temporary contract laborers or "guest workers" , who were allowed to be employed in America for a set period after which they were then expected to return home. By the time the program ended in , more than 4.

Living and working conditions were sufficiently harsh that contractees often dropped out of the program. Many failed to return home to Mexico, remaining here illegally. Though at times justified as a way of stemming illegal immigration, the Bracero Program is widely seen as having exacerbated it.

Not only did this program whet the appetite of growers for cheap, low-skill labor, it also opened the eyes of hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers to opportunities in the United States.

Seeking to explain the emergent problem of illegal immigration in a Public Interest article, Elliott and Franklin Abrams pointed to Bracero a decade after its termination and wryly observed that "the program may be said to be continuing on an unofficial basis. Bracero and its aftermath led eventually to the first major effort to deal with the consequences of mass illegal immigration. Widely recognized as having facilitated hundreds of thousands of fraudulent legalization claims, IRCA has since rendered the term "amnesty" virtually unspeakable by American politicians and public officials.

Those sanctions imposed penalties on employers who knowingly hire immigrants not authorized to work in the United States. But because immigrants can establish "authorization" with identity documents that are easily counterfeited, the sanctions have proved ineffective. Over the years, several programs have been implemented that rely on more effective verification methods. But these initiatives have largely been stymied by a coalition of employers, immigrant advocates, and civil libertarians opposed to anything resembling a "national identity card.

Few Americans now recall that, prior to IRCA, it had never been against federal law to hire a non-citizen lacking work authorization. Today, individuals who hire fewer than ten illegal workers during any month period are unlikely to be prosecuted.

This conveniently offers relief to many small-business owners and most home owners hiring gardeners, painters, or cleaning ladies. Politicians and nominees for high-profile government appointments have sometimes been embarrassed by their employment of illegals, and any American might be legally vulnerable for failing to pay Social Security taxes for undocumented workers.

But the average American can still drive down to the local Home Depot parking lot and hire a day laborer without fear of being charged with violating the law. And for those who do overstep these generous boundaries, counterfeit identification affords protection from prosecution under the provision that they did not knowingly hire undocumented workers. In these many ways, the United States has long expressed a profound ambivalence toward illegal immigrants. Americans do not, by and large, approve of those who reside here without permission, yet we implicitly invite them to do so and only reluctantly crack down on their employers.

Just as the circumstances faced by illegal immigrants in our country are simultaneously threatening and encouraging, so the nation's attitude toward illegals has long been at once hostile and welcoming. This ambivalence toward undocumented immigrants is evident even among those responsible for enforcing our immigration laws. In scores of interviews with Border Patrol agents over the years, I have been struck by two contradictory comments they invariably volunteer.

Herein lies the unique challenge of immigration-law enforcement. By contrast, local police are unlikely to be defensive about their status as law-enforcement professionals. Nor are they likely to be heard saying, "If I were in that guy's shoes, I'd be dealing drugs or robbing convenience stores. The same ambivalence is evident among Americans in general. Despite popular outrage over illegal immigration , there has been remarkably little hostility directed toward illegal immigrants , and indeed many people express sympathy for them.

This relative tolerance stems, in part, from the fact that as we have seen important sectors of our economy depend on undocumented laborers. But those accepting of illegal immigrants are not only business owners driven by market competition and the desire to avoid more burdensome requirements for verifying the legal status of new hires. They are also home owners motivated by convenience and empathy, as well as social-service providers and educators who, unsurprisingly, are not eager to inquire into the immigration status of the men, women, and children seeking their help.

And local law-enforcement officials are generally reluctant to get drawn into immigration issues, especially pertaining to illegals. Such responses can be acknowledged, and perhaps even applauded, without taking the additional step of regarding the undocumented as blameless victims of forces beyond their control.

Illegals are well aware of the serious risks they incur. They know they are breaking the law, and they are willing to take difficult jobs under poor conditions, all in pursuit of longer-term goals for themselves and their families. The economic consequences of immigration both legal and illegal are difficult to assess, and are subject to much controversy among economists. Yet one conclusion is clear and consistent: The big winners are the immigrants. As economist Gordon Hanson reports, a year-old Mexican male with nine years of education almost quadruples his hourly wage by migrating to the United States.

It is not difficult to see why a young person would take major risks to reap this sort of reward. Assessing the costs and benefits of immigration for the United States as a whole is another matter.

At the lowest end of the labor market, there is evidence that the influx of unskilled immigrants in recent decades a substantial portion of whom are illegals has reduced the wages of workers with less than a high-school education. These workers, many of whom are African-Americans, are already the least advantaged in our society, and the effect of immigration on their circumstances certainly deserves more attention than it receives from journalists and policymakers.

Nevertheless, the overall negative impact of illegal immigration on Americans' wages is limited. At the same time, however, the economic benefit of illegal immigration is also frequently overstated.

Economists again disagree; overall, however, they calculate a gain of at most a few tenths of one percent of annual gross domestic product as a result of immigration. Yet if immigration has only slightly increased the overall size of the national economic pie, it has affected how that pie gets sliced up. The owners of capital, business entrepreneurs, and people who can afford the services provided by low-skilled immigrants have clearly benefited.

In effect, low-skilled immigrants increase the productivity and national-income share of those who employ them. This uneven distributional impact of immigration has occurred during a period of increasing income inequality. Indeed, wage stagnation over the past few decades has roughly coincided with the steadily increasing numbers of immigrants arriving since the reform. Incorrectly, but perhaps not surprisingly, many Americans attribute their economic woes to immigrants.

As economists Kenneth Scheve and Matthew Slaughter observe: "Less-skilled people prefer more restrictive immigration policy, and more-skilled people prefer less restrictive immigration policy. The other frequent complaint against immigrants is that they pose a fiscal burden. Illegals in particular are criticized as "freeloaders" who use public services but pay no taxes. Here again, the reality is more complicated. Many also pay Social Security and other payroll taxes, and some pay federal and state income taxes.

The relevant question is whether illegal immigrants contribute as much in taxes as they receive in public services and benefits. Living in households that have, on average, lower incomes and more children than those of non-immigrants, undocumented workers do receive more in public benefits than they pay in taxes.

It is less evident at the federal level, where immigrants are typically net contributors. Overall, however, illegal immigrants are undoubtedly a fiscal drain in the short run and, according to Hanson, in the long run as well.

Yet focusing too narrowly on such fiscal and economic effects has impoverished our understanding of the broader set of motivations driving illegal immigrants here in the first place. As numerous studies reveal, illegals are often "target earners" who come to the U.

To maximize income, they work at several jobs; to minimize expenses, they live in spartan, often substandard conditions. To meet their earnings targets, illegals endure long hours in unpleasant, sometimes dangerous conditions.

Over time, their goals of returning home often get pushed off into the future and, as we know, many illegal immigrants end up remaining in the U. Yet the notion of someday enjoying wealth earned in the U. Employers understand these dynamics. They avoid investing time and money training workers who might leave or get deported. Yet employers also regard illegals as ideal for occasional or undesirable jobs where high turnover is the norm.

But as Hanson points out, even on the books, undocumented workers are valuable to employers precisely because they are more flexible and responsive to market forces than are other workers. Labor organizers have learned this the hard way. Activist lawyer Jennifer Gordon has chronicled her ultimately unsuccessful efforts to organize undocumented day laborers in suburban Long Island.

She succinctly identifies one obstacle she could not overcome: The workers were "settlers in fact but sojourners in attitude. The employers are too small and too varied to make organizing them practical. Not surprisingly, such transience is not confined to the workplace. Young people detached from the constraints as well as the supports of families back home exhibit what one sociologist refers to as "instrumental sociability," characterized by transitory friendships, casual sexual encounters, and excessive drinking to a degree uncommon back home.

Such atomism helps explain why immigrant communities often lack strong leadership and organizations. In their study of four Chicago neighborhoods, Richard Taub and William Julius Wilson quote a parochial-school principal: "Mexicans don't think they're going to be living here a long time.

That makes them not invest much in their neighborhood. So the instability that characterizes life among the undocumented does not result simply from their legal status, but reflects their own priorities and goals.

For all these reasons, illegals can be seen as entrepreneurs whose pursuit of opportunity can and does result in big gains. In the continuing debate over immigration, however, there is little understanding or even acknowledgment of these social and communal consequences. Among policy elites, the focus is on analyzing concrete especially economic costs and benefits. Meanwhile, popular energy and fervor are fixated on legalities.

Among those most inflamed by this issue, the chief concern is typically not the cost of illegal immigration or its social consequences, but the fact that illegal immigrants are flouting our laws and showing contempt for our society. It is perhaps no surprise that the anger and deep anxiety aroused by illegal immigration are so frequently expressed in the legalistic terms of our liberal, contractarian society. In this sense, the debate is an extension of the divide between populists and elites that characterizes our politics more generally.