California governor signs bill removing ‘alien’ from law

The trio of the immigration-related measures will take effect on January 1, 2016.

State Sen. Tony Mendoza, a Democrat from Artesia who authored the bill, said that bill banning the use of “alien” was required to modernize the state’s labor law.

SB 432 was one of 15 pieces of legislation Brown signed into law on Monday. Immigrants work and pay taxes, create new products, businesses, and technologies and generate jobs for all Americans.

The BLS also found that foreign-born workers were more likely than native-born workers to be employed in service occupations.

Gov. Brown said he didn’t want the state to use the word “alien” as it is seen as a derogatory and disparaging term for those residents who were not born in the United States.

In 1970, the Legislature repealed labor code that discriminated against immigrant workers by requiring that citizens be given preferential treatment for employment.

The bill passed the State Senate unanimously. While Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor and the New York Times are among those who’ve criticized the phrase illegal alien-the Times’ style guide says the construction is “sinister-sounding”-California’s pre-existing law used only the standalone term alien to refer to noncitizens”. Other states also still use the term. It had consistently been in double digits in the other periods studied, peaking at 21% in 2007.