Alien (law)

Template:Legal status In U.S. law, an alien is a term Americans use for a person (person includes both corporations and humans) who is not a citizen of the United States. A foreigner is a citizen of the United States not a citizen of the state in question as in a New York corporation is a foreign company inside New Jersey. Types of "alien" persons are:

• An alien insurer is company which is a citizen of another country.
• An alien who is legally permitted to remain in a country which is foreign to him or her. On specified terms, this kind of alien may be called a legal alien of that country.
• An alien who has temporary or permanent residence in a country (which is foreign to him/her) may be called a resident alien of that country.
• A visitor with the legal right to visit a country (which is foreign to him/her) may be called a nonresident alien of that country.
• The term illegal alien commonly refers to a foreign national who resides in another country unlawfully, either by entering that country at a place other than a designated port-of-entry or as result of the expiration of a non-immigrant visa. The important distinction is that this person intends to remain in the country indefinitely. A tourist who has the present intent to leave would be included as a legal alien described above. Today the preferred term by the politically correct is illegal immigrant because the word alien has become unpopular.
• An enemy alien is an alien who is designated as an enemy; compare to enemy combatant.

• In Latvian travel documents, the term alien is used for so-called non-citizens (nepilsoņi): former citizens of USSR who have no citizenship, but have some legal ties with Latvia.

See also

• Citizen
• Corporation
• Dual citizen
• Immigration
• Naturalization
• Gaikokujin
• California Alien Land Law of 1913
• Alien and Sedition Acts

External links

• Resident Alien Information
• Aliens (Encyclopedic Entry)