Are there legal aliens?
Executive summary
Yes: U.S. law recognizes “aliens” (people who are not U.S. citizens or nationals) and it explicitly distinguishes those who are present or admitted lawfully — commonly called lawful permanent residents, nonimmigrants, refugees or asylees — from those without authorization; these lawfully present noncitizens are what ordinary speech and legal texts mean by “legal aliens” [1] [2] [3] [4]. The term “alien” is a statutory term in the Immigration and Nationality Act and related federal sources, and those classified as lawfully present receive specific legal statuses and protections even when terminology has shifted in public discourse [5] [6] [7].
1. What the word “alien” means in U.S. statute
Federal law defines “alien” as any person who is not a U.S. citizen or national, a definition spelled out in 8 U.S.C. §1101 and summarized by legal reference sites such as the Legal Information Institute [1] [5]; that statutory definition is the baseline for all immigration categories and determines who counts as an “alien” for administrative and judicial purposes [6].
2. Categories that count as “legal aliens” under immigration law
Within that statutory framework Congress and agencies create categories of lawful presence: lawful permanent residents (green card holders) are “aliens living in the United States under legally recognized and lawfully recorded permanent residence” and are explicitly identified by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services [2]; nonimmigrants are aliens admitted for specific temporary purposes and periods (students, workers, visitors) with defined conditions on their stay [3]; refugees and asylees are other lawful categories set out in immigration law and agency guidance [4].
3. Different settings use different labels but the legal substance persists
Courts, tax authorities and agencies often use distinct labels (resident alien, nonresident alien, immigrant, nonimmigrant) depending on context — for example the IRS defines an “alien” for tax purposes and distinguishes nonresident from resident aliens using the green card and substantial presence tests [8]; academic and legal glossaries note that modern usage sometimes favors “immigrant” or “nonimmigrant” in place of older phrases like “resident alien,” but the underlying legal categories and rights remain anchored in statute [4] [9].
4. Rights and limits: lawfully present aliens have statutory protections, but not all rights are identical to citizens’
Lawfully admitted aliens acquire a range of legal rights and duties — from eligibility to reside and work, to certain constitutional protections recognized by the Supreme Court — but Congress retains plenary authority to regulate immigration and to define attendant rights and liabilities under immigration statutes, a tension reflected in constitutional commentary and case law cited in official annotations [7] [6].
5. Common confusion: “legal alien” vs. “illegal or undocumented alien”
The phrase “legal alien” contrasts with statutory and administrative definitions of unauthorized or undocumented presence (for instance definitions that describe illegal entry or overstays), and some sources track historic terms like “legalized alien” for people who adjusted status under past statutes [10] [11]; contemporary discourse, however, often replaces “illegal alien” with “undocumented immigrant” or other terms, even as statutes retain language about lawful and unlawful presence [12] [10].
6. What reporting and these sources do not settle
These sources establish that the law recognizes aliens and that some aliens are lawfully present; they do not, however, settle normative debates about terminology, public policy, or the social implications of the labels — those controversies are outside the descriptive legal definitions provided by USCIS, the U.S. Code, IRS guidance and legal encyclopedias cited here [2] [5] [8] [6].