House Democrat hits Republicans for blocking attempt to strike ‘illegal alien’ from Library of Congress
A House Democrat criticized his Republican colleagues for blocking several of his Wednesday night attempts to stop the Library of Congress from using the term “illegal alien.”
In a series of tweets Thursday, Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, blasted the House Rules Committee that voted down a series of amendments allowing the Library of Congress to refer to undocumented immigrants as “unauthorized noncitizens” rather than “illegal aliens.”
Castro compared his colleagues’ votes to the rhetoric of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
“Will be interesting to see if [House Republicans] rejects divisive, belittling, Trump-like words or falls in line behind their new leader,” Castro tweeted. Trump’s rhetoric about Latinos and illegal immigration has sparked a number of firestorms during his campaign.
In an earlier tweet, Castro argued that “Congress has never interfered” with similar proposals before and that Republicans were “making history to preserve a dehumanizing term.”
House Republicans included a provision in a bill funding the legislative branch that blocks the Library of Congress from changing the term “illegal alien” to “unauthorized noncitizen.” Castro’s amendments would have altered the budget bill, allowing the Library of Congress to change how it refers to immigrants in its special headings.
Special headings are normally noncontroversial tools used by the Library of Congress to aid its researchers and other libraries in finding materials, according to Library of Congress spokesperson Jennifer Gavin. The library updated about 5,000 of those terms last year as a way of keeping the terminology relevant for researchers attempting to obtain materials.
But the House Rules Committee rejected Castro’s amendments in order to preserve the old terms, which Castro said are offensive to Hispanics.
“I believe the term ‘alien’ is not only offensive but also dehumanizing,” Castro said Wednesday in testimony before the Rules Committee. “These folks may not be U.S. citizens, but they’re not from outer space. They are human beings.”
A separate motion by the Texas Democrat to bring a bill he authored on the subject to the floor also failed, although a Castro spokesperson said it was more intended to force members to take a stance on the issue.
Gavin said the library first began considering changing “illegal alien” several years ago, and it is rare for a proposed change to generate such controversy.
“We’ve never seen a bill introduced along these lines,” Gavin said.
Despite the pushback, Gavin said the agency would comply with any changes to federal law that would affect the updates to “illegal alien.” She also said the library did not have a stance on Castro’s bill.
“Congress is our primary client, along with the public. We were created to assist them and we respect what they ask us to do,” Gavin said.
Other examples of past changes to subject headings include moving from the term “domestics” to “household employees” in 2011 and altering “cellular telephones” to “cell phones” in 2010.
Republicans argued that the change is bowing to political correctness. Reps. John Culberson, R-Texas, and Lamar Smith, R-Texas, as well as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wrote a letter to the Library of Congress in May asking it to roll back the proposed language change.
“Such an action is beneath the dignity of the Library of Congress,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter. “Rather than engage in revisionist history, the Library should base its decisions on sound judgment, taking actual history, present facts, and future research efforts into account.”
The controversy comes as Republican lawmakers are deciding how to grapple with the latest Trump firestorm. The Manhattan billionaire has repeatedly questioned the impartiality of a U.S.-born federal judge because of his Mexican heritage.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., called Trump’s argument the “textbook definition of a racist comment.”
