Policy makers in Sacramento have created "a kind of California citizenship" in an effort to integrate tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants living in America's most populous state, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Irrespective of their legal status, California residents are already entitled to in-state tuition and driver's licenses, and many migrants benefit from state-funded healthcare for children and new rules designed to limit deportations. Now, lawmakers have stricken the word "alien" from the local labor code, the newspaper noted.

"We've passed the Rubicon here," said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist. "This is not an academic debate on the U.S. Senate floor about legal and illegal and how high you want to build the wall. (California) doesn't have the luxury of being ideological; the undocumented are not going anywhere."

California Gov. Jerry Brown, last Monday, announced that the term "alien" would no longer be used to refer to foreign-born workers and that he had signed a law to that effect.

"'Alien' is now commonly considered a derogatory term for a foreign-born person and has very negative connotations," said state Sen. Tony Mendoza, the author of the law that imposes the semantic change. "The United States is a country of immigrants who not only form an integral part of our culture and society, but are also critical contributors to our economic success."

The effort received praise from immigrant-rights advocates -- and even from some local Republicans. Rep. Kristin Olsen, who leads the GOP in the California Assembly, said her political party was increasingly open to state action in the absence of immigration reform at the national level, the Los Angeles Times noted.

"There is a growing recognition now that we're a state of rich diversity," Olsen said. "We're a state of immigrants, and that's a positive," she concluded.

Nevertheless, some rights and privileges are still remain off-limits to the undocumented -- even in California. For example, Brown vetoed a measure in 2013 that would have allowed legal immigrant residents to serve on juries, saying in his veto message that "jury service, like voting, is quintessentially a prerogative and responsibility of citizenship," the newspaper detailed.