Stop speaking about "immigrants"?

The discussion on the debate site Newsmill continues, today with a piece by Nima Gholam Ali Pour. He argues that the Swedish discourse has been focused on solutions that assume that immigrants is a homogenous collective that can be integrated through collectivist policy measures, for instance the "Sweden contract" proposed by the conservative party wherein immigrants would promise to follow Swedish laws (as if people residing in Sweden were not obliged to do so anyway). He goes on to state that a fundamental flaw of the discourse is a lack of definition of the term "integration" itself, and this is of course an important observation: if the end goal of a policy has not been properly defined, then how can it ever be achieved?

However, his own piece also lacks clarity in this regard. For instance, he notes that there are many reasons for why "people have not become integrated". The sentence structure itself is quite revealing. The people he is talking about - immigrants - are to "become integrated". By whom? Who is doing the active work? Strictly speaking, integration is a process of negotiation whereby two (or more) bodies, institutions or systems unite, wherein all the concerned parties are subjects and contribute. Agency is available and required for all parties for integration to succeed, otherwise it is probably more appropriate to speak about assmiliation, where one dominant party defines the terms and conditions to which the weaker party has to adjust.

Finally, he reaches goes on to state that Sweden has become divided into "Swedes" and "immigrants"  as a result of the collectivist approaches and policies that lay the burden of adaption on "immigrants", and concludes that it is time to stop speaking about "immigrants". While it is true that terms like "immigrant" can easily become loaded with negative meanings and lead to collectivist treatment of ethnic "others", the solution is hardly to do away with the term itself. This denies the rich and often formative experience that is a part of changing country of residence. I can't see any reason why the people who went through this process should be denied the possibility of drawing upon this experience as they enter public space. Moreover, only in a social context that views difference as something negative can this experience be seen as problematic or even threatening the collective identity of the community.

It seems to me that it would be more prudent to pursue a policy framework where difference is accepted and respected, instead of trying to ban terms like "immigrant" from the public discourse.