They called Them Aliens. But maybe It’s Because They Remembered What Was Lost

The term “illegal alien” gets used like it’s bureaucratic language. But it’s not. It’s deliberate. And dehumanizing.

I’ve always hated that phrase-”alien.” The way it strips people of humanity. Of dignity. It implies not just foreignness, but wrongness. Danger. Distance.

Someone I knew once said, “Well, They’re not from here.” But the older I get, the more I think: That’s not the full story.

What if people are called “aliens” not just because of where they were born-but because of what they carry?

I’m a white person living in the U.S. I benefit from systems built to exclude. And I’ve had to unlearn so much-especially around what makes someone “belong.”

And this is what I’m beginning to understand: People are called aliens because they carry memory. Memory of land. Of village. Of deep-rooted love that does not serve the empire. That memory threatens the systems that rely on erasure.

Maybe that’s what scares them not difference but remembrance.

Not because they’re from “somewhere else”- but because they still know something this system tries to erase: how to live in connection. How to hold each other. How to love without condition.

So no-I’ll never reclaim that word. But I’ll name what it reveals. When they call others “alien,” what they’re really saying is: You’re bringing something human into a system that forgot how to be.

If you’re white like me, and this stirred something in you-let it. Sit with it. Speak from it. But don’t speak over the ones living it.

And to those who are constantly dehumanized:

I see the violence in that word. And I’ll keep speaking against it- because you are not alien. You are not illegal. You are deeply, radically human.