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And others commented on Trump's use of the phrase during the State of the Union speech itself, including former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and the American Civil Liberties Union, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization dedicated to defending individuals' rights.

My mom is an immigrant
My dad is an immigrant
I am an immigrant
My mother's 6 brothers came to America too
It is a deeply interdependent family
All successful
All tax-paying (one is an accountant!)
All proud & contributing Americans
Call it #ChainMigration
Or call it America

— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) January 31, 2018

\"Chain migration\" is an anti-immigrant slur. \"Family reunification\" is how many immigrants have arrived in this country. #SOTU

— ACLU (@ACLU) January 31, 2018

Experts from conservative groups, including Vaughan, disagree with the backlash over the term.

\"The term chain migration has been around for decades and decades and it's widely used among scholars of immigration and policy experts,\" Vaughan told ABC News this morning. \"It's always been a very benign term.\"

Vaughan also pointed to Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who spoke earlier this month about how the term shouldn't be used, even though there is C-SPAN footage from a floor speech in 2010 when Durbin used the term himself.

\"It's a term that everyone has used for a long time and all the sudden it becomes off limits when people disagree with the reforms,\" Vaughan told ABC News.

The term is used to describe the chain-like way that people are allowed to apply for legal immigration to the U.S. after a certain relative lives in the country.

\"It's like a chain that just keeps going out,\" said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

\"PHOTO:
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
PHOTO: A woman carries a sign in a demonstration where immigration activists, clergy members and others gathered against the imprisonment and potential deportation of an immigration activist in front of the Federal Building on Jan. 29, 2018 in New York.
>

Those who oppose the term, like Diane Rish, the associate director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, claim that it \"makes it seem like there's this chain in place when at the end of the day it's really all about family reunification.\"

\"Family reunification\" is the preferred term by some advocacy groups, but neither that nor chain migration are actually used by the State Department. Instead, the State Department calls it \"family-based immigrant visas,\" which are broken down into categories determining who can apply.

Under the current system, immediate relative immigrant visas are intended for the spouse of a U.S. citizen, unmarried children of the citizen under the age of 21, parents of a U.S. citizen who is at least 21 years old, and orphans either already adopted abroad or to be adopted abroad by the U.S. citizen. After that group, there are four categories of other relatives who can be granted family preference immigrant visas: unmarried sons and daughters of U.S. citizens and their children, married children of citizens and their spouses or children, brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens and their spouses and children, and the spouses, minor children and unmarried children of lawful permanent residents.

\"PHOTO:
Win McNamee/Pool via AP
PHOTO: President Donald Trump claps during the State of the Union address in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol to a joint session of Congress, Jan. 30, 2018 in Washington.
>

The immigration plan proposed by the Trump administration does not get rid of such family-based immigrant visas but limits them. In the State of the Union speech, Trump billed it as a way to \"protect the nuclear family.\"

\"Under our plan, we focus on the immediate family, by limiting sponsorships to spouses and minor children,\" he said.

Von Spakovsky said that the cries of racism surrounding the term are \"just an attempt to divert people from debating the issue.\"

\"They bring out the racism claim as a way to try and shut down debate,\" he told ABC News.

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