New Jersey lawmaker pushes to strike term 'illegal alien' from state statutes, citing 'offensive language'
Fox News
A New Jersey Democratic state senator is pushing for legislation to replace the "offensive language" of "alien" and "illegal alien" from state statutes with the term "foreign national."
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The bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Nilsa I. Cruz-Perez, who represents District 5 in Camden and Gloucester counties, said it "removes from State law the offensive language characterizing persons who are immigrants as ‘aliens’ or ‘illegal aliens’ and prohibits State executive agencies from using those terms in any proposed or final rule, regulation, interpretation, publication, or other document, display, or sign issued by the agency after the effective date of this bill, except to the extent that they are used in quoting or reproducing text written by a source other than an officer or employee of the agency."
"The United States is a nation of immigrants, and as such, our laws should discontinue the use of terms that ostracize those in our society who may have been born elsewhere," she said in a statement regarding the bill.