Seeing this question pop up today led me to wonder if the aliens should be migrate to something along the lines of extraterrestrials. This is mostly because I tend to associate seeing with "alien" with the "Belonging to a foreign country or nation." definition.
1 Answer
It shouldn't.
From looking over the questions tagged as aliens there isn't one question tagged as aliens but concerning immigration, also there is a tag immigration 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 ufo, all the questions under this tag talk about extraterrestrials, but they are not all tagged as aliens as well, which means that there are questions that are missing their appropriate tag, I suggest instead to merge the ufo and aliens tags under the aliens tag.
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@RobZ, you are right according to the dictionary, but can you find at least 1 existing question that addresses UFO but not aliens?– SIMELApr 6, 2013 at 0:17
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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.– rjziiMay 1, 2013 at 12:39