Rhetorical Analysis: The Next Immigration Challenge

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Building a wall across the border between America and Mexico border is a topic almost everyone in the US is aware of. However, in the article “The Next Immigration Challenge,” Dowell Myers proposes that policies that are developed to prevent the entrance of immigrants should be replaced with policies that work towards integrating immigrants into the American society. Myers argues that since illegal immigration is dwindling, energy and resources should be put to better use in harnessing the potential of the existing immigrants as against creating barriers to the entry of additional illegal migrants (188). Addressing a general audience, Myers successfully argues that endorsing restrictive immigration policies will hurt the American economy in …show more content…

What is in it for America? Myers begins by clarifying that immigrants do desire to integrate into the American society. Although pointing to his own research on this claim appears not to provide a strong ethos, his reference to two other researchers – John Pitkin and Julie Park – removes any perceived weakness in his credibility. According to the research, “immigrant parents and children, especially Latinos, are making extraordinary strides in assimilating” into the American Society (Myers 189). Evidence of this desire of the immigrants to integrate into the American society is that they are becoming homeowners (Myers 189). Myers further builds his ethos by providing research data on Latino homeowner ship. The data indicates an expected increase of between 69 percent and 74 percent in Latino homeownership by 2030 over the 20 percent of 2000 (Myers 189). Myers presents the logical economic benefit of the immigrants and their children as two-fold. Firstly, these immigrants buy homes from the 78 million baby boomers who are “looking to downsize as their children grow up and leave home” (Myers 189). This not only creates revenue for the baby-boomers but also fortifies the future of the American housing market. Secondly, these immigrants and their offspring replace the millions of Americans retiring from the workforce on a yearly basis. According to Myers, …show more content…

On the issue of education, Myers acknowledges that less than thirty-three percent of adult migrants have a high-school diploma. Nevertheless, he trivializes this argument by establishing, with concrete data, that by 2030, 80 percent of the children of Latino immigrants that arrived before 10 years of age in 1990 will have a high school diploma (Myers 189). In fact, 18 percent of them are expected to have Bachelor’s degrees by the same time frame (Myers 189). Additionally, Myers recognizes that his call for shifting of focus from immigration policy to an immigrant policy may be misconstrued as advocating the jettisoning of immigration policy as a whole. He reaffirms that the role of the Department of Homeland Security in enforcing immigration policy must continue to exist especially with the evident threat of terrorism from abroad (Myers 190). However, he clarifies that the role of immigration policy should be enabling “immigrants and their children graduate from high school and college” (Myers

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