Style guide on "illegal immigration" and "illegal immigrants" - Immigration

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