Language matters in politics, especially in this digital age when repetition and redundancy are all what's needed to establish the use of a term as eternally acceptable in the mainstream. Case in point: "Illegal Alien" is a nativist, bigoted and even bordering on racist term that has become common parlance in mainstream media.
It's with great pride then that I see how Justice Sotomayor is making her mark in the US Supreme Court. In Mohawk Industries v. Carpenter, No. 08-678 [PDF] she introduced one new and politically charged term into the Supreme Court lexicon. From ImmigrationProf Blog: Justice Sotomayor Makes a Difference!:
As Bill Hing has previously posted on ImmigrationProf, and I have written on Concurring Opinions, the choice of terminology -- aliens. illegal aliens, illegal immigrants, undocumented immigrants, people -- matters in the discourse over immigration. Consequently, by employing a more neutral term, Justice Sotomayor has added significantly to the Supreme Court's dialogue on immigration, which is likely to be with us for the foreseeable future
http://culturekitchen.com/liza/blog/justice_sotomayor_makes_history_with_the_use_of_undocumented_immigrant
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