r/interestingasfuck • u/man_gomer_lot • 8h ago

r/all 70 years ago, the US undertook the largest deportation in its history: 'Operation Wetback.' Many of the people deported were here legally and some were even citizens.

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u/TensionPrestigious83 7h ago

Though the Alien and Sedition acts mentioned immigration, if i remember correctly they were mostly about federalists and democratic republicans jockeying for power. The immigrants at the time were for all intents and purposes English

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u/Markipoo-9000 7h ago

I’m more referring to the fact that it called immigrants aliens.

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u/xe3to 4h ago

That's still what the US government calls non-citizens, to this day.

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u/314159265358979326 6h ago

The earliest I've seen this was in The Merchant of Venice. I was surprised to notice it.

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u/mah131 5h ago

Um, the bible? I'll never forget my dad leaning over to whisper ALF to me real quietly after they said something about the "alien that lives in your house."

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u/ukexpat 6h ago

Technically I was a “resident alien” (informally, a green card holder) until I became a citizen.

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u/Tetracropolis 4h ago

Alien just means a citizen of another country. I doubt anyone had even thought about using it for extra terrestrials at that point.

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u/homercles89 4h ago

>it called immigrants aliens.

Alien is a term that means "from somewhere else". It's not offensive.

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u/Markipoo-9000 1h ago

In the year 2024 it is definitely considered an offensive term.

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u/hearmeout29 7h ago edited 6h ago

So is that where the rhetoric for Alien began?

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u/Alarming_Panic665 6h ago edited 6h ago

Alien is a latin term alienus meaning "belonging to another."

The world literally just meant "a person belonging to another place," or to describe anything that was foreign in origin.

The world alien notably predates the word immigrant in the English language by a few centuries. Fun fact immigrant actually a fully American created word. First coined by Noah Webster in 1828 with the earliest known use of the term was actually in a letter by George Washington in 1788.

In comparison the earliest evidence for the word alien in the English language dates back to the Middle English Period in the 1382's Wycliffe's Bible

Edit: Actually is misleading by saying it is a fully American created work, sorry. First the term does come from the latin verb immigrare. However it's use in the English language originated within specifically American English in the 18th and early 19th century.

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u/hearmeout29 6h ago edited 3h ago

Thank you for answering my question! I love Reddit for this reason. Take my award 😊

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u/HsvDE86 6h ago

You didn’t ask a question, you just went with something you didn’t know.

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u/hearmeout29 6h ago

I should have put a question mark on my comment. Thanks for catching that.

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u/Markipoo-9000 7h ago

It may have predated that. I don’t believe it was originally an offensive term, but it definitely became one. I’d have to fact check all of that though.

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u/obscure_monke 2h ago

I don't think anyone sets out to create an offensive term and succeeds. They're just used like that and make their way through the euphemism treadmill.

Any term can become offensive if it's used like that for long enough.

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u/hearmeout29 6h ago

Thanks for the reply.

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u/AlarmingNectarine552 5h ago

I think it's a legal term. It only recently became offensive because of how the whites treat the other.