Immigration Glossary - Glosario de lo migratorio

What is this site?

This is an interactive platform to consult and maintain a living glossary of immigration and migration terms.

It is not an official production of any branch, entity, or agency of any government.

While it strives to be as accurate, up-to-date, and nuanced as possible, you should make your own decision on its trustworthiness. The author(s) offer no guarantees; we only hope it helps you.

This website is not and does not provide legal advice. It should not be used as a substitute for official guidance, case law consultation, court rules, or advice from a qualified attorney or accredited representative.

Who would use this?

This project is intended to be used by anyone seeking to understand the similarities, differences, alignments and lacunae of immigration law, procedure, proceedings, contexts and experiences between the United States and other places. In particular,it was designed and written with the professional linguist in mind: translators, interpreters, and terminologists, although legal scholars, attorneys, and others may find it useful as well.

Its initial version is a bilingual Spanish-English glossary.

• Will it be expanded to other languages?

  Maybe! That's what open-source, collaborative resources are for. Here's our Submissions page.

• Will it be expanded to cover topics other than immigration?

  On the one hand: Immigration is the context to end all contexts. Immigration is not a specific event or type of thing; it can, and does, touch every conceivable aspect of the lives of people who do it. That's why we have tags and categories.

  On the other hand: No. This glossary may come to be interlinked with others, but there should be a separation of concerns; otherwise, it's just a dictionary, and loses its ability to provide domain-specific insight and guidance.

Where did this come from?

This work has its origins all the way back in the 1950s, when Berlitz was contracted by the US Federal Government to create a glossary for the first interpreters, translators, and professionals who began to deal with the institutionalization of the movement of people across the Mexico - US border, given the, at the time, newly-created frameworks of migration and asylum laws.

That glossary, over the decades, was updated from time to time, often by people working with or for the Immigration Courts, wherever they happened to be housed within the structure of the Federal Government at the time. Currently, that entity is the Executive Office for Immigration Review, orEOIR.

The bulk of this glossary was drawn from the work of Staff Interpreter Oliver JL Renwick and his colleagues, who provided a comprehensively updated and expanded glossary for the EOIR in 2020.

For full details on sources and a bibliography, see theBibliography & Sources page.