It’s important to remember that aliens are not all from space. Or from Mexico, if you’re an Arizona politico.
The non-specificity of the term led to a co-worker at Business 1st taking offense at his residency status.
“I’m not an alien!” he complained. “I’m from India!”
I explained that Americans were linguistically lazy people, who had shortened the explicit phrase “space alien” to the generic “alien”. He wasn’t satisfied, but I distracted him with the subtleties of “cheesy”.
“So cheesy is bad?” he asked.
“Unless you like cheese,” I explained. “Then it’s good.”
He never asked me about language again.
Tales of the Atomic Zombie 