What is a First-Generation Immigrant?

Gemini 3.8 Flash objects to some of my terminology. It says:

Your confusion is entirely justified. The terminology around immigrant generations is notoriously ambiguous and has been debated by demographers, sociologists, and everyday speakers for decades.

Which Definition is Standard and More Common?

In official statistics, sociology, and standard contemporary English, the convention is the opposite of your intuitive zero-indexing model:

• First-generation immigrant: Refers to the person who actually immigrated (foreign-born, relocated as an adult or adolescent).
• Second-generation: Refers to the children born in the destination country to at least one foreign-born parent.
• Third-generation (and higher): Refers to grandchildren of immigrants whose parents were already native-born.

This convention is explicitly followed by the U.S. Census Bureau, the Pew Research Center, the United Nations, and academic sociological literature. Under this standard framework, "generation" refers to the chronological wave of the family's presence in the country, where Generation 1 is the pioneer cohort that stepped off the boat or plane.

The Alternative (Your) Interpretation

Your interpretation—that the foreign-born person is "generation zero" and the first person generated or born on domestic soil is "first generation"—is neither uncommon nor baseless.

In fact, some older texts, community groups, and everyday speakers (particularly in countries like Canada or among certain diaspora communities in the United States) have historically used "first-generation" to mean "the first generation born as citizens in the new land." Because of this genuine linguistic split, scholars often use unambiguous phrases such as "foreign-born" and "native-born of foreign parentage" when precision is critical.

Sociologists also introduced fractional classifications to address edge cases, most notably the "1.5 generation", which describes children who immigrated alongside their parents before adulthood. Because they were born abroad but socialized and educated in the destination country, they share traits of both the first and second cohorts.

Is It Accurate to Call a Native-Born Citizen a "Second-Generation Immigrant"?

Strictly speaking from a legal and semantic standpoint, calling someone born in the United States an "immigrant" is contradictory. Under U.S. law, anyone born on domestic soil is a birthright citizen and never underwent immigration. Therefore, they are not an immigrant; they are an American citizen by birth.

For this reason, demographic institutions typically avoid pairing "generation" with "immigrant" for the native-born. Instead, they prefer:

• "Second-generation American"
• "Children of immigrants"
• "Second generation" (used as a standalone noun)

When popular culture or media outlets use the shorthand "second-generation immigrant," they are treating "immigrant" as a cultural or sociological descriptor rather than a legal one. In that context, it denotes someone raised inside the immigrant experience, navigating bicultural households, heritage languages, and the distinct assimilation challenges of an immigrant family.

Does "Immigrant" Include the Broader Family?

In everyday parlance, people frequently speak of an "immigrant family" as a collective unit. That label naturally encompasses the household as a whole, even when some siblings or children were born locally.

However, applying the label "an immigrant" directly to an individual who was born in the country is factually inaccurate. If their parents were the ones who moved, they are a child of immigrants or a second-generation American. If only their grandparents moved, they are of immigrant descent or third generation, but neither they nor their immediate household are considered immigrants.