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Seeing this question pop up today led me to wonder if the should be migrate to something along the lines of . This is mostly because I tend to associate seeing with "alien" with the "Belonging to a foreign country or nation." definition.

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  • [extraterrestrials] should be alias for [aliens].
    – kenorb
    Jun 18, 2014 at 14:48

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It shouldn't.

From looking over the questions tagged as there isn't one question tagged as but concerning immigration, also there is a tag which is used for these question.

English is not my first language, so my perception may be different from people for whom English is a first language. But I think that it's mainly an American phenomenon, when I spoke with British people about the subject, they didn't use the term aliens, but illegal/undocumented immigrants. For me alien is a more instinctive name for an extraterrestrial than extraterrestrial. When I watch American movies/TV I sometimes need to remind myself that they are talking about Mexicans and not Martians, as I'm genuinely confused.

I'm afraid that some people who are not familiar with the term extraterrestrial, might miss it.

However, there is a different issue, which is the tag , all the questions under this tag talk about extraterrestrials, but they are not all tagged as as well, which means that there are questions that are missing their appropriate tag, I suggest instead to merge the and tags under the tag.

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  • I disagree with you about merging ufo and aliens since UFO is also an aeronautical term that definitively does not mean aliens.
    – rjzii
    Apr 6, 2013 at 0:14
  • @RobZ, you are right according to the dictionary, but can you find at least 1 existing question that addresses UFO but not aliens?
    – SIMEL
    Apr 6, 2013 at 0:17
  • From the existing questions it doesn't appear to be the case but that isn't reason to conflate the tags either. You can have UFO report without claiming that aliens are involved (i.e. classified military aircraft). In the United States the media tends to use "illegal immigrants" these days as opposed to aliens although the "alien" term is still used when you read legal documents.
    – rjzii
    May 1, 2013 at 12:39

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