Rhetorical Journal # 2

The article entitled Illegal Immigration written by Peter Katel focuses on the number and history of illegal immigrants flooding into this country and the issue of reforming the current immigration policies. In this article they are trying to lay down the facts using the Ethos and the Logos. There is little Pathos involved because they are not trying to sway your opinion one way of the other.
The author builds up his credibility or ethos by stating facts that cannot be disputed. They are numbers such as “more than 10 million illegal live in the United States and 1,400 more arrive every day”. By starting out with this fact it builds up the authors creditability. He does tend to make claims after his facts that might or might not be actually true. For example he says “While illegal immigrants make up only about 5 percent of the U.S. work force, they are rapidly making their presence known in non-traditional areas such as the Midwest and South”. He starts the sentence off with a fact about the exact percentage of illegal workers in this country and follows it up with a point that they are rapidly making their presence known. That might or might not be true but by building up his credibility he is able to make these claims.
There is little to no pathos is this article. The only possible pathos is when the author talks about Maria and Juan Gomez’s journey and illegal status in the U.S. He remotely tries to play on the audiences that they get up everyday and are extremely hard workers in this country and that if the audience continues to want cheap labor from Maria and Juan they have to accept illegal immigration in this country. There is little pathos in this article because once again, the author is not trying to sway your opinion one way or the other, he is just trying to present the argument. That is why logos is the dominant rhetorical appeal in this article.
Logos is all over this article, stating facts and numbers about illegal immigrants in this country. He is able to back up his facts by stating that they are from bureau censuses and government data. For example he says “About 96 percent of the 4.5 million illegal immigrant men now in the country are working, concludes Jeffrey Passel, a former U.S. Census Bureau demographer who is now senior research associate at the Pew Hispanic Center”. This article is driven by facts and that is why I would say that dominant appeal of this article is logos. There are a few logical fallacies. He time after time states that illegal immigrants are taking jobs away from residents in the United States. This is confusing cause and effect. The jobs are still out there, the immigrants are the ones who are willing to work for less though. Americans still have the opportunities to obtain these jobs but chose not to work for such little pay. Yet overall I would say that this is an extremely valuable source to obtain facts about immigrants coming into the country.