Talk:Illegal immigration to the United States

Edits Needed for Grammar, Clarity

I don't meet the requirements for editing a semi-protected article. Can someone please fix this for me?

In the overview (the first section, before the comments), the second-to-last sentence reads:

"Sanctuary cities – which adopt policies designed to not prosecute people solely for being in the country illegally – have no statistically meaningful impact on crime or reduce the crime rate."

Logically speaking, it's redundant to say they have no statistically meaningful impact on crime and also that they don't reduce the crime rates. But first, just grammatically speaking, it should read:

"Sanctuary cities – which adopt policies designed to not prosecute people solely for being in the country illegally – have no statistically meaningful impact on crime, nor do they reduce the crime rate."

This is still syntactically incorrect though, because as-written, this sentence means sanctuary cities reduce the crime rate, which isn't what the author was trying to say, because that is either incomplete or nonsensical. I'm pretty sure they were trying to indicate that sanctuary cities do not have different crime rates or lower crime rates (again, redundant) solely by dint of being sanctuary cities. Also, "statistically meaningful" is a weird way to say "statistically significant", so I changed that too. Finally, "designed to not prosecute" is a) awkwardly worded and b) confusing, so I fixed that too. All told, if I am interpreting the author correctly, a better way to put this is:

"Sanctuary cities – which adopt policies designed to prevent the prosecution of people solely for being in the country illegally – do not have statistically significant differences in crime rates when compared to non-sanctuary cities with comparable traits."

BUT! If I'm wrong about what the original author meant and they were trying to say that sanctuary cities don't impact crime rates in the larger region they are in, though, it should be:

"Sanctuary cities – which adopt policies designed to prevent the prosecution of people solely for being in the country illegally – do not have any statistically significant impact on regional crime rates."

AN ADDENDUM FROM ANOTHER VIEWER: I would like to know what type of statistical test and the significance level being employed to determine 'statistical significance/ non-significance'. Were the data employed fulfilling the assumptions of randomness, normal distribution and equal variances? If not, were they appropriately transformed? Simply failing to reject the alternative hypothesis does not necessarily mean the null hypothesis is correct - in conducting the test in this case, one has simply failed to reject the null hypothesis.

Please stop abusing inferential statistics to make political cases. The references provided are not academic, peer-reviewed papers. They are linked to think-tank and news agencies that have had political connections for decades and often employ poor statistical rigour or none at all.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.145.95.151 (talk • contribs) 18:05, November 30, 2018 (UTC)

Request for comment on chart content and form

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Clear consensus to favor Versions A, acknowledged by the creator of Versions B. Minor cooperative suggestions for improvement can be made separately, outside this RfC. —RCraig09 (talk) 06:14, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

---

Encounters version A

Encounters version B

Expulsions version A

Expulsions version B

EA version A

EA version B

Please provide your preference for Versions A or Versions B for immigration-related Wikipedia articles, and beyond. —RCraig09 (talk) 03:13, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Disclosure: I (uploads) am creator of Versions A which are result of many discussions (mostly in the climate change area).
Newer editor User:Superb Owl (uploads) is creator of Versions B (which are more his personal preference) and peppers articles with them, sometimes replacing Versions A. Despite various interchanges (including this), Superb Owl remains unconvinced. —RCraig09 (talk) 03:13, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

• Versions A, for at least the following reasons:

— More comprehensive timescale — not cherry-picked, better quantifies the data, and provides context

— Division of time axis into segments that are meaningful to humans

— Judicious use of horizontal gridlines to make it easier for people to gauge height of bars (no need to label each gridline)

— Larger font for readability on par with surrounding prose text

— Inclusion of vertical axis, per most common chart formats

— More formal presentation for an adult encyclopedia article

— SVG is preferred over PNG

Prior indications:

— Here, User:JSwift49 favored Expulsions Version A.

— Here, User:Izno even suggested taking the creator of Encounters Version B straight to ANI.

I'm hoping to show Superb Owl how Wikipedia consensus works, what the consensus here is, and specifically to stop their replacement of Versions A with their Versions B. —RCraig09 (talk) 03:13, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Encounters: I only replaced the last version after you seemed to complain about maintaining it each month with updated data. If you are happy to continue to maintain it, then by all means replace it as it is the (very narrow) current consensus, but I would be curious to know if anyone else finds Craig09's gridlines overkill and choice of time scale redundant since there is already an Encounters chart covering FY 2020-2023, so the choice of a narrower time scale is to avoid redundancy.
EA version A also requires squinting to see 21st century trends and is confusing whether it is stacked or overlapping (otherwise I would prefer it) Superb Owl (talk) 04:46, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

• I think with the first two, Version A are clearly better. The data in Encounters Version B is cherry picked and only shows the part where there is a decrease. Expulsions Version B is harder to read (smaller font and no grid lines) and not otherwise an improvement.
• I also support Version A with EA as I find it more informative re. historical trends and not confusing. There might however be a case for Version B in an article solely focused on that narrower timeframe. I think there should also be a chart showing the number of migrants released into the country if that data exists.

JSwift49 10:36, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

• Definitely Version A because they provide a more complete picture chronologically. For the first graph, a single year is not very useful at all and smacks of recentism. (Bot summons) Cheers, RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 20:40, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
• Version A graphs are much higher quality. ~ HAL333 (VOTE!) 05:19, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
• Mixed. I prefer Version A for encounters and expulsions, primarily because it's easier to attach the data to the applicable year. For enforcement actions, Version A gives a much broader picture in terms of the time frame, but the differently colored bars in Version B are easier to read for the years it covers. Maybe doing bars like that for every year since 1900 is unwieldy? If so, it would often be useful to include both versions in an article, to get the broader chronological perspective and to make it easier for the reader to absorb the data for the most recent years. JamesMLane t c 22:27, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
• Version A for all three. A few principles should be applied to these sort of visualizations:

• Visual contrast for marks: General guidance on mark contrast for accessibility and ease of viewing is to get the ratio above 4.5:1^([1]), and higher is better. Version A uses colors
     

     
  with a contrast ratio of 5.09:1, meeting this standard. Version B uses colors
     

     
  with a contrast ratio of 2.87:1, falling short of the standard.
• Label legibility: Version A uses a font size that is consistent and legible, even at small sizes (i.e. without expanding the image). Version B's font size is inconsistent, with the expulsions title overly large and the axis labels too small to read at small scale. Additionally, the label font color chosen for B does not meet the contrast standard (
     

     
  2.30:1).
• Axis ticks and labels: For expulsions and encounters, version A has clearly demarcated years and gridlines, which make it easy to perform a bar-to-year or bar-to-quantity lookup. Version B simply labels the extrema as "Oct 2023" and "Sept 2024" -- maybe some people can perform the interpolation in their head, but I cannot. For the vertical axes, abbreviations such as "10K" for 10,000 allow for a larger font size and a more readable graph. For year axes, axis labels are not needed.

That said, while I'm offering comments, I shall say that while Enforcement Actions A is better than B, I might suggest a few changes. These are mostly nitpicky and just my personal taste, but I would remove the "million persons" label (unless there's a distinction being made -- do these numbers only count one action per person? But regardless that could be moved to the title), remove decimals and add "M" for million to the vertical axis ticks , and bring the title up out of the plot space. As for the X range of the plots as JamesMLane refers to above, that's gonna depend on the article in question. Srey Sros^talk 20:55, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Also, I should add, the first two version B plots look an awful lot like the default Google Sheets style, which, even if it the style was nice-looking (which I don't consider it to be), does not inspire confidence among readers (for better or worse, in my experience people tend to judge graph reliability at least partially by "production value"). Srey Sros^talk 21:08, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for weighing-in and helping to explain the various advantages to option A - there seems to be a clear consensus for option A across the board (except for some ongoing discussion on EA version A). I also join JSwift49 and JamesMLane in advocating for keeping a version that only shows the years since (maybe ~2010 or so?) Superb Owl (talk) 08:04, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

The two editors you, Superb Owl, mention, favored a shorter timeframe only if the article focused on that shorter timeframe. Though a 4-year timeframe might be appropriate for Immigration policy of the Joe Biden administration, that is not the case here. Clearly, there is no reason to maintain a one-year chart as it is cherry-picked, whether intentionally or not. It's sad that so many people had to be involved in this process, but I hope the time and energy expended will be learning experiences that you will put to use and that you will apply consensus rather than project your own personal preferences. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:00, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Open the article for public editing

This article is clearly written in a sympathizing tone by deliberately providing unnecessary, overtly forced information about the benefits and concerns of illegal immigration in the introduction section without adequate information about the harmful effects and law-violation nature in return. This is not neutral information, this is propaganda. 1.55.108.22 (talk) 02:53, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

It is not propaganda, just because facts aren't on your side doesn't mean you need to vandalize the talk section. Jayson (talk) 15:16, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

At this point, the anonymous editor is simply trolling. He/she has not vandalised any text that I could find. Dimadick (talk) 15:41, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

True, and if someone wants protection to be removed from an article, trolling will likely have the opposite effect. O3000, Ret. (talk) 13:26, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

100% agree. The entire page switches from percentages & prior years rather than stating the truth in the enormous growth of illegal immigration from 2020-2024. U can read the border statistics in comparison. This is so unfortunate as i often come to this site for reference to facts. Looks like throwing ur opinion in there will be your downfall. 104.174.11.156 (talk) 12:35, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 February 2025

In the article, only 4 categories of foreign-born people in the United States are listed. There is a 5th category, which is US citizens born outside the United States whose citizenship was attained by birth (i.e. who did not need to be naturalized or adopted).

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/us-citizenship/Acquisition-US-Citizenship-Child-Born-Abroad.html Elizabeth3000 (talk) 18:45, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's true that US citizens at birth born outside the US are not naturalized. Section 8 of the US Constitution states

The Congress shall have Power To...To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

Since US citizens at birth born outside the US acquire citizenship not directly through the 14th Amendment, but rather through an act of Congress, and the power granted to Congress is "To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization", maybe they are naturalized. It's interesting that if such a person obtains documentation of citizenship through the State Department (passport and/or consular report of birth abroad) they don't have to take an oath of allegiance, but if they obtain a Certificate of Citizenship through United States Citizenship and Immigration Services they do. (But the oath is waived if the person is considered too young to understand an oath). Obviously citizens born in the US don't have to take an oath of allegiance. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:15, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template. This appears to be complicated and needs further discussion. LizardJr8 (talk) 01:39, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

Terminology for people in the US who lack authority to be there

In the last day or two there have a number of edits switching between terms such as "illegal immigrants" and "unauthorized immigrants". I'll simply point out the most recent talk page discussion I can find about this is Talk:Illegal immigration to the United States/Archive 13#Terms "illegal" vs "undocumented" vs "unauthorized" which started in December 2021. There does not appear to have been a clear resolution within the discussion, although there might have been a resolution documented elsewhere. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:08, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't notice your User:Jc3s5h post before I posted a new section below. I, also, couldn't find any resolution in the archives. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:24, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

"Illegal immigrant" vs "Undocumented immigrant" (somewhat) revisited

The narrow question I raise is Wikipedia's use of the term "illegal immigrant". The term, objectively and apolitically, is a misnomer since a person cannot be "illegal". Only acts or actions (such as immigration or immigrating) can be illegal. In a recent edit comment, User:Irruptive Creditor has referred to "undocumented immigrant" as a euphemism, which is a clearly political viewpoint.

I have no objection to the term "illegal immigration", as it refers to an act. I object only to use of "illegal immigrant", as it refers to a person.

Archive 3 does not seem to have resolved this specific issue. Editors: please post your concise, reasoned opinion on this specific issue. —RCraig09 (talk) 17:45, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

You are expressing a political opinion. "Illegal immigrant" is the correct term. 75.40.74.125 (talk) 05:06, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

According to whom? EvergreenFir (talk) 05:07, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

The government of every country 2603:6080:A000:76BD:191B:F009:6396:B750 (talk) 21:55, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

Terminology: "Illegal" immigrant vs "Undocumented" immigrant in article mainspace

The narrow question is which term to use in article mainspace: "illegal immigrant" versus "undocumented immigrant". The issue focuses on the adjective applied to the noun immigrant—the individual. (This issue is distinguished from using the term "illegal immigration" (the act of immigrating) which is not at issue in this RfC.)

Of course, this RfC does not affect discussion of the terms themselves in the article. I suggest that editors reply with Illegal or Undocumented or other specific adjective. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:15, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

• From what I can tell, undocumented is more accurate as the criminalization of undocumented immigration has historically been in flux. At times, undocumented immigrants have been tolerated and at other times they have been criminalized and persecuted. Some people such as asylum seekers or those who've had their visas revoked have immigrated legally but become undocumented when their documents are invalidated by a change in government policy. Monk of Monk Hall (talk) 18:51, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
• Insufficient publicity for RFC and Inappropriate page for RFC. The wording of the RFC indicates it isn't meant to apply just to this article, but rather to all of article space. As such, it should have been publicised at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), and maybe conducted there as well. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:13, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

  I have notified "Village pump (proposals)" participants of this RFC. Jc3s5h (talk) 11:04, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

  This is the issue I was going to raise. Regardless of the result, this is bound to be followed by endless discussions about when/where this applies. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 16:06, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

• As far as I can tell "undocumented" is just a euphemism. Migrants that lost their passport would match that name, but that is not what the article would be talking about. If people attempted to enter illegally, then I suppose they are not yet illegal immigrants, until they actually enter the country. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:24, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
• Undocumented. Skipping the politics: "illegal" is objectively wrong as applied to persons: acts can be illegal but persons cannot be "illegal". "Undocumented" may not be the only term to describe the persons, but it's more accurate than "illegal". (original poster: —RCraig09 (talk) 16:24, 28 March 2025 (UTC))

  Agreed on this point Sock-the-guy (talk) 19:20, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

  And the term is referring to their act of immigration, so I don't see the problem. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 11:22, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

• Illegal immigrant because violation of rule of law is generally described as "illegal action", not as an "undocumented action". This is distinct from person with literally no documents (loss/theft/destruction) which obstruct identification of the person. Also distinct from statelessness. HudecEmil (talk) 16:44, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
  • The proposal is not asking to change illegal [action] to undocumented [action]. Immigrant refers to the person, not the action, which is why it gets complicated to make it "Illegal person". I don't think anyone objects to using "illegal immigration". — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:02, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

    The term "immigrant" is not a simple reference to a person, it refers to a person in the context of their actions. Just like wordz like "driver, "operator", or "arms manufacturer". All of which can be modified by illegal . --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:12, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

• Illegal immigrant; I believe that it is harmful to usurp a useful term for another purpose. The term undocumented immigrant should be reserved for persons who
  1. Entered in a period when there was no legal reqirement to apply for permission
  2. Entered legally but lost their papers.
  3. I'm not sure how to describe people who entered lawfully but then had their status revoked. They are neither illegal nor undocumented. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:38, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
• The problems with "illegal immigrant" have been pretty well documented. It's not just about "feelings", but that it's often simply wrong. You can see this in our article's lead: visa overstays have accounted for a larger share of the growth in the illegal immigrant population than illegal border crossings. Here we're using "illegal immigrant" to refer to someone who legally migrated (then overstayed). They didn't migrate illegally, but they are no longer authorized to be in the country. Border crossing can be illegal, overstaying can be illegal, immigration can be illegal, not having proper documentation can be illegal, etc., but the person isn't themselves illegal. The counterpoint to this argument, putting aside the reactionary "stop trying to make language take feelings into account", is that in the United States, "illegal immigrant" is used in laws and a variety of federal policies/handbooks. For a US-specific article, that's not a bad counter argument, even if I find the argument not to use it more persuasive. Also, a lot of people just don't like "undocumented" and prefer something like "unauthorized" or "person in the country illegally" or actually differentiating between "person who immigrated illegally" from "person who overstayed a visa". I'll also say IIRC there have been multiple attempts to propose changing this language site-wide which have failed to find consensus in support. That's not to say there's consensus to use "illegal immigrant", but no consensus to mandate any change. Consensus can change, of course. FWIW. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:02, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

  My understanding of "immigrant" is a person who moved to a destination country permanently, or for a long indefinite time. If a person is lawfully admitted, especially in the US, and there is defined end date to the period the person may stay, the person isn't an immigrant; the person is a visitor. The defined end date may be a calendar date (September 28, 2025) or when a certain event takes place (maybe with a grace period). For example, a person on an F1 student visa may stay 60 days after the studies are completed (sometimes including related work experience). Jc3s5h (talk) 20:52, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

• The community has consistently failed to come to a consensus on this, and I think it'd probably be wisest to just treat it as a WP:STYLEVAR rather than holding discussion after discussion. The closest thing I know to an NPOV/non-MOS:CONTENTIOUS label is "unauthorized", and that would be my first choice if this (problematically structured) RfC goes forward, but I think we should recognize that not every contentious issue can or should be unequivocally resolved one way or the other. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 00:29, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
• Illegal — undocumented reads to me as a euphemism. I tend to roll my eyes at the "no human is illegal" argument because I read "illegal immigrant" as a derivative of the somewhat less controversial phrase "illegal immigration" as opposed to "illegal" referring directly to the person. Would also be open to "unauthorized"; while it's not as commonly used, it does seem like the most neutral option. (summoned from VP) —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 00:40, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

  That argument is more with regard to the use of "illegal" as a noun (e.g. "Those illegals are taking our jobs!"). JJP_Master (she/they) 01:53, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

• Illegal immigrant, per Chatul. JacktheBrown (talk) 11:29, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
• Undocumented -"illegal" implies government has investgated the case and made a legal decision--generally they have not done so. Rjensen (talk) 13:17, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
• Undocumented. "Illegal" clearly implies that they have been charged and convicted of a crime, which isn't the case here. In particular, we generally cannot state that anyone who falls under WP:BLP an illegal immigrant unless they've been charged and convicted of this in a court of law per BLP's provisions discouraging statements of criminality without a conviction; that means putting a statement of criminality in the title of this article would functionally make it difficult to mention any living examples in it. "Illegal" is also misleading because the article covers the full history of undocumented immigrants and, at various points in history, being an undocumented immigrant was not criminalized and therefore not illegal. --Aquillion (talk) 13:46, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Undocumented because of the objective reasoning that the article discusses undocumented immigration that wasn’t criminalized at the time as well as illegal undocumented immigration. I actually agree that “undocumented immigration” is basically a euphemism for “illegal” in contemporary times, and “illegal immigration” is probably the common name, but in this case it’s simply incorrect. Dronebogus (talk) 14:17, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Unauthorized, with a second choice of undocumented:

Illegal has a specific meaning that is not always applicable to the topic -- it generally implies criminalization, and as Aquillion points out, we cannot dub an action by a living person as either criminal or illegal without such characterization made through the proper judicial processes. This philosophy is also broadly held by RS's in general -- even for non-persons, most newspapers and other reputable publications will refrain from describing an action as illegal until and unless properly adjudicated as such.

Undocumented is better, as it doesn't connote criminality, but from a terminology perspective the term is somewhat imprecise -- some people have legal status but aren't in possession of documents proving such, and some people with status documents may not actually have legal authorization. However, it is broadly used by RS's to refer to all unauthorized immigration, so it would be acceptable for us to follow suit, as long as we are clear how we are using the term.

To draw an illustrative example: consider the hypothetical case of a legal permanent resident who, in retaliation for criticism of the US government, is captured and removed from the country without process by immigration enforcement. Such a person's administrative authorization has been revoked, but there has been no judgement of illegality, so we cannot say illegal, and the person does have documentation, so we cannot say undocumented.

I believe that unauthorized is the proper term to describe the subject of this article, and to generally describe what people tend to mean if they say illegal or undocumented in this context. It refers to all acts of entering or staying in the country without administrative authorization. Srey Sros^talk 17:12, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

• '''Undocumented''' Articles should reflect the terminology used in mainstream sources, which reject "illegal" as inaccurate and dehumanizing. COMMONNAME does not apply because it refers to article titles, but even it advocates not using common names if they are disparaging or inaccurate and alternative names are available. TFD (talk) 01:59, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose both The article should specify the precise reason why the immigrant's presence in the United States is unlawful. If the person overstayed a visa, it should state that. If they crossed the border illegally, it should state that. If they were denaturalized and stayed in the US anyway, it should state that. JJP_Master (she/they) 02:06, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Discussion

Almost all !votes above argue whether one term or another is better from legal or logical perspective. This makes for interesting reading, but our policy is WP:COMMONNAME. It would be good to see data-based arguments on which term is more common. Alaexis_¿question? 21:45, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, even if this RfC has any weight to it (which is in question), the !votes so far are based on editors' personal interpretations and aren't going to be very helpful in weighing policy-based consensus. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 00:00, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Talking about commonname, then illegal immigrant is by far the most common use in Australia. Even visa overstayers, would be called that. But since this would be an American English subject, we probably need to to have Democrat or Republican English subtypes to pick one use. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:46, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

COMMONNAME is moot because the topic isn’t illegal immigration, it’s undocumented immigration. Those are actually two different things. Dronebogus (talk) 14:18, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME relates to article titles—which here is immigration and not immigrant. Reading the original RfC above, the issue here is about describing immigrants and not describing immigration. —RCraig09 (talk) 14:25, 29 March 2025 (UTC)