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Yao David Gamligo

Professor Amanda Watts

College composition 120

20 February 2018

Immigration in America

People have been coming to the U.S. to find a better life ever since the day the colonies

were founded. America Is known for being a haven for different cultures, religions, and people

regardless of where they are from; that is what the base foundation of what America is. The very

same people who first founded Jamestown (the first colony of America) left Great Britten

because they wanted to escape religious persecution that was limiting their way of life.

Considering how America was founded it’s interesting to see how that narrative has now

changed when it comes to race and immigration. It is still true that the U.S. is filled with a

variety of different people, but not everyone is accepted for who they are simply because of what

they look like and where they were born. This essay will rhetorically compare Travis Geier’s

letter on why “Ending DACA will not ‘Make America Great Again’ and Ross Nelson’s letter on

why “America has every right to pick and choose who can move here”. Both letters speak on

issues of immigration and how they affect the US as well as what it means to be someone

immigrating into the US.

Travis Geier’s Ending DACA will not ‘Make America Great Again talks about how trump

ending DACA the immigration program that was put together by the Obama administration will

not make America great again in the genre of a letter which makes his claims more personal to

the reader. Travis Geier was a previous NDSU student, who lives in Fargo and although not
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much information is know about him it still very apparent that he wants to make a statement

about immigration which seems to be a topic he cares about. In the text he explains how

immigrants are an integral part of why America can function, and he argues that Immigrant’s

aren’t a drain on the Americas public resources as well. His overall argument is about the

Differed Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) that President Donald Trump wants to

end. 800,000 individuals were brought to the US under DACA “They are given work permits

and Social Security numbers. They pay taxes. They cannot be convicted of felonies or

misdemeanors while under the program” (Geier). Geier explains that this is “cruel, unethical, and

nonsensical, which in this instance is his appeal to pathos, because he wants readers to know that

it’s not okay to take away a lifestyle that was gifted to unfortunate people. It does not represent

what America stands for and it definitely will not, “‘Make America Great Again.’”. In this letter

I assume his intended audience are those who are unaware of what DACA is and what it does for

immigrants. The end of DACA will be a nationwide issue because children who were protected

under this act will be immediately be deported back to their native home. It wouldn’t matter who

they are, where they work, or how much they had contributed to their community; they would be

ripped from their life and sent to a country they aren’t familiar with and left with little to no tools

to help them back on their feet. A lot of Geier’s argument is him trying to convince his audience

why not allowing immigrants into the US is not beneficial which is another appeal to pathos. In

the letter he explains how “immigrants pay more into taxes and federal programs than what they

will receive in benefits”, so it’s more beneficial to the US than most people think which in this

instance is an appeal to Logos. Travis Geier does not believe that ending DACA will make

America great again as much as Donald Trump would like you to think. Attempting to make

‘America great again’, has been a theme with President Trump far before he went into office, but
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very few of his new policies have brought America into his new dawn of greatness. Geier makes

a good statement on immigration, but it still falls short, his letter is rather short and although it

does make some valid points about DACA it isn’t enough to make a strong statement about

immigration, but it does do a good job of getting a conversation started.

Ross Nelson’s talks about how America has every right to pick and choose who can move

here, in the genre of a letter, for the same reason as Geier, because it makes the text more

personal. Not much information is known about Ross Nelson, but he has written multiple opinion

letters for Inforum, most of which are political opinion pieces. In the text Nelson isn’t exactly

expressing his own opinion, but rather the opinion of Mike McFeely and commenting on the

flaws of those opinions. McFeely is a WDAY radio host and a columnist who has been working

with Inforum for more than two years. Furthermore, Nelson goes on to explain that McFeely

believes that to truly be a part of the US you must be able to completely renounce all traditions

and customs. This is an appeal to pathos because it resonates with McFeely’s target audience of

liberals who can’t have their American morals spat on. In this statement he ignores what the

United states represents. America is supposed to be a place where all people regardless of their

origins can come together and coexist. Although McFeely disapproves of outside culture he does

favor the idea of letting in unskilled, uneducated immigrants, which could be interpreted as

wanting immigrants to fill the low skill requirement jobs like fast food, retail and etc, leaving the

high skill industry jobs unchallenged, but this is not certain, McFeely doesn’t state why. This

way of thinking is rather limiting; as a nation with the goal of progress and innovation in mind,

we should be striving to bring in talent from across the globe. If not for the many immigrant

talents that came to America, we would not have progressed this far and this fast. Many of

Nelson’s comments on McFeely in this text appeal to Logos when considering how he defends
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the benefits of having Immigrants in the states. This use of Logos is very important to the text

because it explains to readers why McFeely’s statements are ignorant. For instance, a lot of

McFeely’s statements appeal to Pathos and Ethos; McFeely is attempting to reach out to the

closed minded liberal group of Americans who read his articles and listen to his radio channel.

Ultimately McFeely’s audience is afraid of change and failing to see that “the world brims with

ethnic, racial, religious, political, customs, linguistic and traditional friction” (Nelson). In this

text Nelson’s narrative is meant to educate an audience that may not be aware of the impact of

immigration and how it has benefited our lives today. It’s unknown if Nelson himself is an

immigrant, but as an American it seems he cares about immigration because he knows how

America has come to the state it’s in today. Nelson’s letter is a good example of what an ignorant

bigot sounds like. He quoted and summarized the opinions of McFeely and made rebuttals that

show what kind of damage closed mindedness can cause.

When comparing how America has every right to pick and choose who can move here by

Ross Nelson and Ending DACA will not ‘Make America Great’ Again by Travis Geier, it’s

important to note the angles of both texts. Geier’s text emphasizes the importance of why

keeping immigrants in the US is beneficial and Nelson explains the errors of bigoted thinking on

the topic of immigration. Both texts speak on immigration and its relevance in the US, but in

different areas respectively. In Geier’s text he writes about immigrants that are already living in

the US specifically those under the DACA program. His main argument in this text is why

getting rid of the program isn’t beneficial. In Nelson’s text he writes about the flaws of ignorant

thinking when it comes to who the US should let in. his argument involves educating his

audience on the importance and relevance of culture. Both texts use Logos to effectively teach

their audience how immigrants have impacted the US’s economy and work force, but Geier uses
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more Pathos in his text. The specific appeal to Pathos involves having Geier’s audience think

about how the end of DACA would tear apart families. Both texts use Logos and Pathos well,

but neither writer has appeal to Ethos; both Geier and Nelson are presumably amateur writers,

neither one of them have much information posted on Inforum or on the internet so their

audiences are very capable of being unbiased, but in Nelson’s text he does talk about Mike

McFeely who does have some appeal to ethos considering he is a WDAY radio host and a

columnist. This bit of information gives McFeely’s opinions some weight in Nelson’s text

because he is a known writer with a radio following. Furthermore, if I were to rate both texts I

would say they’re both on the same level; I say this because they both contain good information

about their topics and both writers make good arguments, but they both fail to take the

conversation of immigration further. It is true that they both excelled in different places; Geier

with pathos and Nelson with Logos, but both appeals in their respective texts only scratch the

surface of what immigration in America is. The fact of the matter is Immigration has never been

easy, there are approximately 6 million immigration applications filed every year and it takes

years before many of them are even considered. The law permits only 140,000 people to become

permanent residents per year based on employment and 226,000 based on family member

petitions. As soon as that number of people receive their permanent residence, all the remaining

applicants are put on a waiting list for the following fiscal year. On many years, the number of

applicants has far exceeded the quota, creating waiting lists that are years long. This means that

those applicants waiting on the waiting list may already have an approved employment or

family-based petition, but they still must wait until the immigrant visas becomes available.

That’s just how you apply, we haven’t even mentioned the political and public disapproval of

immigration, nor did we mention why people want to immigrate to America. In retrospect when
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you talk about any topic it’s important to go into depth especially when there is depth to it. If

either letter had included more information about what immigration is and why it mattered it

would have made it that much more impactful and persuasive to a reader.

In conclusion immigrants are an unreplaceable resource for the future of the United

states. Both Nelson and Geier did there best to speak on the current problems that plague it, but a

letter is only enough to get the conversation started. As a reader it’s up to you to continue this

conversations narrative. Why should people care about immigration?

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Process notes:

While writing this analysis I planned it out by making an outline. I figured that it

would be easy to put together if knew how I wanted to write it. When it came to drafting and

revising I enjoyed having class time to have my peers review my work and tell me what I should

add or omit after that I just used my best judgement to figure out what information I need to add.

As for evidence it was pretty easy to choose what I wanted, both of my analytical texts were

fairly short so I knew exactly what I wanted to centralize my paper on after reading them. I just

picked out the information in the texts that made a meaningful impact. As for my context sources

those were a little harder to find because I wanted more information on immigration, but there

are a lot of sources for that on EBSCO. I thought that it would probably be the most impactful if

I put my context at the end of the comparison paragraph, because after analyzing the differences

I felt like if I put information I thought was missing in the article it would make the paper more

insightful. As for the argument itself, I didn’t find it too hard to put together, there are a lot of

things to be analyzed here and I probably could have written even more if I really wanted to. I

didn’t really get too much feedback, more so just tips. I came in for my conference and asked

what I could do to analyze better; I don’t remember the full conversation but, I did learn a little

bit more about how I should be articulating my words to make my analysis meaningful. At the

end of the day I was already familiar with a lot of the topics of rhetoric that we talked about in

class, but I did learn a little more about how to improve my analysis. Finally, while you’re
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looking through my paper could you let me know if I was actually doing a good job with

analysis? Also was my comparison paragraph good? I somewhat feel like it was a little basic.
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- Works Cited

o Geier, Travis. “Letter: Ending DACA Will Not 'Make America Great

Again'.” INFORUM, 5 Sept. 2017,

www.inforum.com/opinion/letters/4322715-letter-ending-daca-will-not-make-

america-great-again.

o Ly, Son-Thierry and Patrick Weil. "The Antiracist Origin of the Quota

System." Social Research, vol. 77, no. 1, Spring2010, pp. 45-78. EBSCOhost,

ezproxy.lib.ndsu.nodak.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx

?direct=true&db=aph&AN=50658707&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

o Nelson, Ross. “Letter: America Has Every Right to Pick and Choose Who

Can Move...”INFORUM, 7 Aug. 2017,

www.inforum.com/opinion/letters/4308549-letter-america-has-every-right-

pick-and-choose-who-can-move-here.

o “Naturalization Fact Sheet.” USCIS, 11 Dec. 2014,

www.uscis.gov/archive/archive-news/naturalization-fact-sheet.