The debate about immigration is heating up again, and so is language we are hearing and seeing in the media. And in this debate, it is useful to look at what the words really mean.

The term "illegal alien" has become so common, and is used so freely, it may surprise people to know that is not a proper description from either a legal point of view or from a point of view of common courtesy. It is an "epithet," an intentionally derogatory term used for the purpose of demeaning the person described.

The law of immigration is embodied in a very large volume of statutes known as the Immigration and Nationality Act, Title 8 of the United States Code. It is a long and complex set of laws, and runs over 300 pages. The term "illegal alien" does not appear anywhere in this volume of law.

The term appears to have come into use in the past couple of decades, in the course of political debate about immigration, especially the large numbers of labor migrants, many undocumented, coming from Mexico and Latin America into the Mainland across our southern border. Some people are strongly opposed to this migration pattern, and some of their reasons are quite right.

The language, however, is dead wrong.

There is a legally correct description for people who sneak into the U.S. It is "entered without inspection" or in customary government acronym form, "EWI." Government immigration workers and immigration attorneys alike pronounce it to rhyme with "kiwi" and use it in daily conversation because it accurately describes the factual basis of a person's lack of lawful authority to be in the U.S.

There is another group of people who are also bundled into the "illegal alien" category, those who entered legally but who stayed on past their authorized time. Immigration practitioners call these people "out of status" — again, because it describes their situation accurately.

Language in the recently proposed law in the U.S. House of Representatives would make all of these people "criminals," as well as those who assist them, even in humanitarian situations. In fact, they would become "felons" — a description usually reserved for particularly serious criminal activity. Currently, immigration violations are considered "civil violations," not crimes.

The difference between criminal law and civil law can be explained quite simply. Some behavior is prohibited because it is inherently evil, such as murder, rape and stealing. Even if no law said so, we would all know that these acts are fundamentally immoral and against any civilized code of behavior. In legal Latin, they are known as malum in se, or "bad in itself." These acts are so bad that we authorize our government to strip the liberty from people who engage in them. We put them in jail, sometimes even to death.

Civil law covers all of the other behavior that we constrain or prohibit because it helps keep society functioning, like controlling the speed limit, paying your taxes on time, or getting a license to practice certain jobs or professions. If you fail to comply with the regulation, you may be in the wrong, but we do not assume that you are evil. These violations are called malum prohibitum — "bad because prohibited."

In deciding whether we should use the term "illegal alien" to describe all of these people, and pronounce them all criminal felons, it may be useful to read some recent news. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month confirmed the convictions of two government contractors who worked at an immigration processing center in Southern California. In an effort to reduce the backlog of immigration delays, they simply shredded more than 90,000 documents, including immigrants' passports, birth certificates, marriage certificates and immigration applications.

Many of the hopeful immigrants whose documents got shredded fell "out of status" while the immigration service tried to figure out how to remedy this mess. The law states clearly that an alien has the burden of proving his right to be in the country, but these folks had entrusted their "proof" to the government and now it was gone, forever. Are these people all now to be called "felons"? Are they now illegal people? No.

No person can be "illegal." The word describes an action, a behavior. The law can, and must, restrict what people may do, but we must not use language and the law to redefine whole categories of people as illegal, much less immoral or evil.

By using this type of epithet to describe people, many of whom are actually just as honest and hard-working as you or me, we allow them to be singled out for mistreatment. We don't need to treat them fairly or humanely, after all, if they are "illegals."

We've done this in the past to other groups, for much the same reason. Derogatory names are used to separate "us" from "them" so we need not identify with the victims of our intolerance. They are not like us, so we don't have to be fair.

However, this does not fit with our better traditions. Our Founding Fathers wanted to see all people treated equally under the law, and told us that all people have certain rights that were given by our Creator, and are inalienable. We must not demean a person's right to be treated fairly, and with dignity, by slandering them, or by passing laws to rename them as criminals overnight.

John Robert Egan is a Honolulu-based attorney who also teaches courses on refugee law and disaster management and humanitarian assistance at the University of Hawai'i. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.