‘Expelled’ Is Expunged From Immigration Lingo

Last year, U.S. authorities expelled illegal immigrants--an estimated 97% of them Mexicans--more than 1.6 million times. But as of last week, no one is being “expelled” anymore; they’re being “removed.”

It amounts to the same thing--only the labels have been changed, according to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Officials in Washington say the new terminology in the tough U.S. immigration law that took effect last week is not just wordplay but instead reflects an effort to simplify the procedures the INS uses to get illegal immigrants to leave the country.

Here is how the INS explains the word change in a March 26 fact sheet on the implications of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996:

“The ’96 Act effects a comprehensive reorganization of the procedures for the removal of aliens by combining the former exclusion and deportation proceedings into a single removal proceeding.”

One beleaguered INS spokesman translated that explanation: “Removal is now being used as a crazy catchall to cover all expulsions, deportations, exclusions, voluntary departures and voluntary returns. All of those are now just removals. Well, technically speaking, the new term isn’t ‘removals,’ it’s ‘unified removals.’ ”

Mexican critics assert that there is much more than language at stake here.

Beyond toughening criminal penalties for immigration-related offenses, increasing enforcement personnel and expanding their powers, the new law makes it easier for U.S. officials to “remove” undocumented migrants from U.S. territory by taking away the migrants’ right to a judicial hearing or review.

As of April 1, only migrants seeking political asylum can get such hearings--and only if the immigration officer who catches a migrant is convinced that he or she has “a credible fear of persecution.”

The law eliminates several INS categories for illegal-migrant departures that grew out of such hearings. Thus, the different words describing those means of departure are no longer necessary, officials say.

But the INS suggests that the no-hearing provision in the new law is likely to have little impact beyond changing vocabulary.

Of the 1,641,286 expulsions from the U.S. during fiscal year 1996, for example, 1,568,797 were voluntary departures.

“In effect, what that means is all but 72,489 of them decided to leave as soon as they were caught by immigration authorities, without availing themselves of their right to the judicial review, which is what they lose under the new law,” the spokesman said.

As for the terminology, the official added, “even though the overwhelming majority of them left voluntarily, last year we officially counted them as ‘expulsions.’ Now that all departures are being counted simply as ‘removals,’ it will be less confusing.”