RUNNING HEAD: IMMIGRATION REFORM AND THE MEANS OR PERSUASION

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Immigration Reform and The Means of Persuasion

Jacqueline Palacios
Montgomery College- Germantown Campus

Author Note
This paper was prepared for English 102 Taught by Professor Storm

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Associate professor at the University of California, Ojeda, published an article in

2013 titled Immigration reform can benefit the US economy, in which he began to
inform his audience exactly how the immigration reform would be prosperous to the
United States economy. Ojeda efficiently used ethos, pathos, and logos in his article to
appeal to his readers and better inform them of the topic of immigration. By using ethos,
Ojeda made his essay more reliable by adding credibility. By the use of pathos, Ojeda
effectively appeals to the part the makes humans, human; appeal to emotions. He tried to
create a connection between the article and his readers in order for his readers to feel
inclined to keep reading. When he used logos, he appealed to logic and appeared to have
a well-constructed argument. Ojeda effectively argued that passing an immigration
reform not only had a lot to offer to the immigrant themselves but also to the economy by
the use of the means of persuasion.
Ojeda used ethos in his article to add credibility to his writing. By doing so, he
allowed his readers to give him the benefit of the doubt that his article was reliable. His
use of ethos also contributed in the persuading factor, in which he tried to persuade his
readers that an immigration reform would benefit the US economy. In his first act of
ethos, Ojeda begins by introducing Wayne Cornelius, a professor from the University of
California that has carried out a study in which he discovered that more then 90 percent
of immigrants would not stop until they cross the border (Ojeda, 2013). Ojeda notes that
the study has been going on for a while, which makes his audience believe that Cornelius
has been studying in depth the rate at which immigrants repeatedly try to cross the border.
By adding a person and describing his credentials, Ojedas article becomes more reliable
as Cornelius works in the area in which he would know much about the topic of

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immigration. Ojeda also introduces another appeal to authority, Francisco Rivera-Baltiz,

who happens to be an economist. Baltiz conducted an evaluation that concluded that
when The Immigration reform and Control Act (IRCA) was passed in 1986, it benefitted
the males about 8.4 percent and women 13 percent when it came to the increase in wages
(Ojeda, 2013). Since IRCA is no longer in action, readers can determine that the number
of wage increases have gone down. Adding an economist has allowed his article to
become reliable when stating the wage increases. It gives the readers that much more
reason to find Ojedas paper reliable.
Apart from using ethos is his article, Ojeda also used pathos to add something that
gives humans their characteristic, appeal to emotion. Like ethos, pathos is another
technique Ojeda uses in his article to persuade his audience that passing an immigration
reform would benefit the U.S. economy. Although, instead of using outside authority to
persuade his audience, he tries to get his readers sympathy. An example of when Ojeda
uses appeal to emotion is when he writes about a report that states 5,067 migrants died
while crossing the border between 1994 and 2008 (Ojeda, 2013, para.8). Immigrants put
themselves at the risk of dehydration, getting attacked by wild animals or women getting
raped by other men. This gets his audience thinking that if these people put themselves
through this, they might be deserving of what they came looking for; legal status in the
US. Another way Ojeda tries to provoke emotion in his readers is when he speaks about
how illegal immigrants tend to go for the lowest paying jobs in order to stay under the
radar and avoid being deported (Ojeda, 2013). When an immigrant agrees to work for the
lowest possible wage, they have given their employer access for labor abuse (Ojeda,
2013). When his audience reads this, Ojeda wants them to feel sorry for the workers. As

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working Americans, they tend to look for the highest paying job with the best benefits. As
an immigrant, they take any job they can find in order to feed their families. This gets his
audience thinking about how just a simple status can change the way we look for jobs.
Appealing to his audiences emotions is another technique Ojeda uses to persuade them
that an immigration reform would be beneficial.
Not only does Ojeda use ethos in his article, he also uses logos. Logos is another
mean of persuasion used in the article to persuade Ojedas readers that an immigration
reform would benefit the U.S. economy. Logos appeals to the need of human logic. By
adding in statistics and having a reform benefit the people as a whole, the essay becomes
more appealing and persuasive. An example of when Ojeda used logos in his article is
when he speaks about how an immigration reform scenario yields the greatest benefits
for the U.S economy - roughly a cumulative $1.5 trillion in additional GDP [gross
domestic product] over 10 years while increasing wages for all workers (Ojeda, 2013,
para.28). Here, Ojeda inserts some statistics in which his readers can see for themselves
how much of a benefit a reform would be not only to them but also to the immigrants if it
were passed. Ojeda also inserts some stats in which there is a predication that after the
first two years of an immigration reform being passed, there will be roughly about a
4,400 thousand increase in wages for immigrants (Ojeda, 2013). The data is used to
persuade his readers and give them logical examples.
Ojedas use of ethos, logos, and pathos were effective when trying to inform and
persuade his readers that passing an immigration reform would make a positive impact on
the U.S. economy. The means of persuasion are set as examples in his text that support
his argument. Ojeda uses them to get his readers to ponder about the topic of

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immigration. He wants his readers to be pro-reform and does a good job bringing across
his points as to why they should be. Overall, he effectively fulfills his purpose when
trying to persuade and inform his readers about an immigration reform by using the
means of persuasion.

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Reference
Ojeda, R. H. (2013). Immigration Reform Can Benefit the US Economy. In R. D.
Lankford, Jr. (Ed.), At Issue. What Is the Future of the US Economy? Detroit:
Greenhaven Press. (Reprinted from Raising the Floor for American Workers,
2010) Retrieved from https://montgomerycollege.idm.oclc.org/login?
url=http://ic.galegroup.com