As of Apr. 3, 2013, the Associated Press altered its widely-used style guide to no longer allow the use of “illegal immigrant” and “undocumented immigrant.” We reviewed 20 major media entities to see what terminology they used. As of Mar. 9, 2016, 20 of 20 use “illegal immigration,” 20 of 20 use “undocumented immigrant,” 5 of 20 use “illegal immigrant,” and 0 of 20 use “illegal alien.”
We use “illegal immigration” to refer to the act of immigrating illegally. We refer to people who have entered the United States without proper legal documentation and who are deportable if apprehended, and people who have entered the United States legally but who have fallen “out of status” and are also deportable as “people who are in the United States illegally,” “people who have immigrated illegally,” “people in the country illegally,” or “undocumented immigrant.”
Our sites contain quotes from various sources over years of this debate; we have not altered words used by our sources.
20 media entities and their use of various terms in the illegal immigration debate (as of 3/9/16) | uses “illegal immigration” |
uses “undocumented immigrant” | uses “illegal immigrant” |
uses “illegal alien” | |
# out of 20 that use the term | 20 | 20 | 5 | 0 | |
1 | ABC | yes | yes | no | no |
2 | Associated Press (AP) | yes | yes | no | no |
3 | CNN | yes | yes | no | no |
4 | FOX Latino | yes | yes | no | no |
5 | Hispanic Leadership Network | yes | yes | no | no |
6 | Huffington Post | yes | yes | no | no |
7 | Los Angeles Times | yes | yes | no | no |
8 | Miami Herald | yes | yes | no | no |
9 | National Association of Hispanic Journalists | yes | yes | no | no |
10 | National Public Radio (NPR) | yes | yes | no | no |
11 | NBC/MSNBC | yes | yes | no | no |
12 | New York Times | yes | yes | yes* | no |
13 | Reuters | yes | yes | yes | no |
14 | Society of Professional Journalists | yes | yes | no | no |
15 | TIME | yes | yes | no | no |
16 | Univision | yes | yes | no | no |
17 | US NEWS | yes | yes | no | no |
18 | USA Today | yes | yes | yes | no |
19 | Wall Street Journal | yes | yes | yes | no |
20 | Washington Post | yes | yes | yes | no |
* discouraged by the New York Times style guide