There has been much argument from immigrant advocates that the terms “illegal immigrant” and “illegal alien” are inappropriate terms to describe people who enter the United States without going through proper admission procedures. Often one will hear such advocates refer to the immigrants as “undocumented,” as even Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has stated. The term “undocumented has become ubiquitous in the media, as stories as recent as here, here, here, and here demonstrate.
So what term, exactly, does the U.S. code use to describe such immigrants, so that the strenuous arguments about proper terminology can be examined in light of the U.S. government’s official terminology?
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