Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch apologized for using the term “undocumented alien” during his Senate Judiciary committee hearing on Tuesday and clarified that he misspoke and meant “undocumented immigrant.”
Under questioning from Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Gorsuch was telling an ancedote about ethnicity and sentencing when he used the phrase “undocumented alien” before stopping himself and saying “immigrant, sorry.”
“My record is when there’s a judge accused of perhaps using language that might bear on a man’s ethnicity, arguably, in the course of sentencing, the panel of my court on which I sat replaced him,” Gorsuch said. “My record, is when an undocumented alien — immigrant, sorry — is not properly represented and there’s a history of lawyer failing his clients in that area, [we] referred him for dismissal from our bar,” Gorsuch told the committee on Tuesday evening.
Conservatives often refer to a person illegally in the U.S. as an illegal alien or illegal immigrant. Progressives often use “undocumented immigrant,” arguing it is a more compassionate term.
In the present day, “alien” is defined in 8 U.S. Code 1101, Section 1101 as “any person not a citizen or national of the United States.”
