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In early April the Associated Press announced that it would no longer use the word "illegal" when referring to undocumented immigrants. The decision has been hailed by immigrant rights groups and others, who say the term is a pejorative that dehumanizes large swaths of the U.S. population, immigrant and native-born alike. Below, authors Andrew Lam, Helen Zia and Chitra Divakaruni offer their own views on the term "illegal" through the lens of the immigrant experience.

My Americanization, A Love Story Andrew Lam

When the Cold War ended and refugees from Vietnam fled en masse, western countries agreed on a cutoff date for hopeful entries. Up until then, anyone who escaped from communist Vietnam was given automatic political refugee status.

After July 2, 1989, however, most were deemed "economic" migrants -- or what we refer to as "illegal" -- and forcefully repatriated.

For one family, the sudden shift proved a cruel twist of fate.

They came in two boats. One - carrying the father and two sons -- reached Hong Kong before the cutoff date. The other -- with the mother and two more sons -- came a few days after. They became "illegal immigrants" and were sent back to Vietnam.

That experience showed me how labels can hold out the promise of a future, or rob you of it. In America, the two boys grew to become an engineer and a doctor. The mother and her two sons in Vietnam, however, were forced to depend on relatives to get by. Neither boy went to school. It took them years to be reunited.

I think of them when I hear the word "illegal." And I think of my own experience.

My family left Vietnam in the aftermath of war. We fled without passports, entering the Philippines illegally, without entry permits or visas. We later arrived in America.

My Americanization story is a love story, a success story. Had I not been granted a place here, I cannot think of where I might have ended up. Perhaps sent back to Vietnam to toil in the new economic zone set up for children of the bourgeois class.

Original post:
Andrew Lam: Dropping the 'i' Word -- History, Humanity and Martians