The expression would make sense if used when you genuinely mean someone who has citizenship, but its current usage is just a synonym to “elderly folk”.
Someday OP…
Someday you’ll learn that some words have different meanings in different contexts…
Someday commenter…
Someday you’ll learn about subtle discriminatory biases in language, which are often implicit and non-intentional, and how they have significant culturo-political effects.
Get off the cross, we need the wood
There’s nothing non-intentional or implicit about denying the franchise to noncitizens. For the vast majority of countries, that is the way citizenship is expressly designed to work as an in-group. Citizenship is generally meant to discriminate against outsiders.
Which reminds me, why don’t more people refer to Elon Musk as an African American?
Oh, you.
Because that would imply that it’s a human.
This whole borrowed/discovered outrage at normal terms from people who aren’t even the subject of the supposed slight (in combination with people who ARE the subject, and ARE NOT offended) is so tiresome.
I don’t usually hear people referring generally to senior citizens in other countries though, and even if they did, wouldn’t they still be senior citizens, just citizens of their respective country instead of America?
My point is about people living in the US who do not have US citizenship.
Also being stateless is less rare than you’d imagine.
Stateless 65+ English speakers living in countries that use the term “senior citizen” is likely rare
Definition 2 of Citizen from Merriam-Webster:
an inhabitant of a city or town especially : one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman
The term is used out of respect, not out of nationalism.