Should I Use the Term “Illegal Immigrant”?
Why ‘illegal immigrant’ is a slur
‘No human being is illegal’: linguists argue against mislabeling of immigrants
The Dehumanizing History Of The Words We’ve Used To Describe Immigrants
Immigration Debate: The Problem with the Word Illegal
The battle over the words used to describe migrants
The bottom line is the term is considered pejorative to those it applies to and many others and that is reason enough to consider it so. Especially once people started doing the tell-tale shortening of the term from ‘illegal immigrants’ to ‘illegals’.
There are plenty of people who argue otherwise but they’re wrong. Once the term has been used pejoritavely by many, and it has been explained it is offensive to a large group of people, those who continue to use it are doing so deliberately despite this. That’s why people don’t use “oriental” to describe people anymore either, along with many other examples.