You have 100% given your opinion: it's dehumanising to call people "illegals".
People who are in this situation speak to other people and share good resources - if this app is useful and trustworthy (which is unclear), then it will get used.
People who are in this situation speak to other people and share good resources - if this app is useful and trustworthy (which is unclear), then it will get used.
(The law, I think, just uses the terms "illegal entry" / "unauthorized presence" / "inadmissible" / etc. and "illegal immigration" to describe the act in general. But USCIS, ICE, etc. do use the term "illegal alien.")
Again, as far as I think, being somewhere illegally doesn't make you any lesser of a human than I am. But they are still here illegally. I could call them undocumented too, but they're still here illegally.
I bet it's none, because you don't see that as a defining characteristic of yourself.
This fuss over the terminology is a trivial matter and completely inconsequential to the lives of these people.
Describing people in this way puts them into a category of 'other'. It defines people by their immigration status, diminishing their value as people.
This allows people to justify a belief that people perceived to be in this category do not require or deserve basic human rights.
Recognising that people are in a vulnerable situation is important, I agree. Happy to hear what positive action would be useful :)
The people who have trouble judging others over terminology are the same as the people who have think changing the terminology is important in anyway. It's the same group on different sides worried over frivolous matters that nobody in the subject group (illegal immigrants seeking asylum) even cares about. All this effort usually just cancels out into a big wasteful political battle that gets nothing done.
It would be much better to talk accurately and come up with a real solution, such as proper detainment procedures, making sure funds and aid are available, communicating with those that are seeking asylum about what can and will happen, and then investigating and solving the root causes (conflict and leadership) in the country they're coming from.