In this century media is an important tool to transfer information to people. One of the forms of media, journalism, can be referred to any kind of information from songs and poems to literature and news. However, skewing information and leaving things out in the written word, as we have seen in many of the old history books, is easily done giving a misleading impression of the reality of many situations. There are also styles of writing-the use of appositives, verbals, and fallacies to name a few-that can be used to make a particular written work much stronger and more convincing. Fallacies can be used in order to give a sense of urgency to a particular matter and to convince a person of a subject’s importance, but mostly are used giving false impressions of a situations’ drastic position. Writers use this style in order to get a point across quickly and effectively, no matter how false that point is, and to hopefully get their desired action taken. One of the issues that is especially important in California is immigration. Not only does immigration to our great state add to the rich culture and diversity of our cities, but it also causes great outrage among many who claim that it should be slowed down or stopped completely because of the supposed affect it has on California’s economy. In the article “State Needs a “Time-Out” from Mass Immigration” by Yeh Ling-Ling stands out in my mind as a piece of literature that uses the different forms of fallacies to get her point across.
In Yeh Ling-Lings first opening paragraph she states “Education, jobs and the economy, electricity, and the state budget rank as the top four concerns for California voters. But can any state leader effectively address those concerns without simultaneously advocating a ‘time-out’ from mass immigration?” With this statement Ling-Ling uses an appeal to fear. If we break down what she is saying we can see that the background message is that no leader can take care of the most important concerns of their states people because immigration is being allowed to continue. However, there are no facts backing up the fact that the reason a leader cannot deal with these issues is because of immigration. Yeh is trying to instill fear by making us believe that those new to the state are tying up the hands and the time of our state leaders, making it impossible for them to even pay attention to our concerns as citizens, which is a ridiculous notion.
The next fallacy in this article is false cause or post hoc reasoning. The author states: “Due to current economic woes, hundreds of thousands of workers in California, professional and low-skilled, are unemployed or underemployed. In addition, according to a study released in 1997 by the National Academy of Sciences, each native household paid an additional $1,200 a year due to services provided to immigrants families.” Though the two may be correlated, one did not cause the other. Many jobs have been lost to budget cuts and advanced technology making humans in certain work places a superfluous expense. Computers can now do the work of many men around the clock and in less time than it would take any human to accomplish a task, leaving a high amount of “low-skilled” and “high-skilled” employees out of jobs. Economic problems have also cause lay-offs and firings in many companies. Many companies have gone belly-up in California due to rising prices of any and all expenses. Though these things may have happened in conjunction with one another, one did not happen because of the other.
Later in the essay we read “Ruth Milkman, director of the UCLA Institute for Labor and Employment, was quoted earlier this year as saying: ‘We’re beginning o resemble much more a Third World society where a class of people are stuck at the bottom.” With this appeal to authority, Yeh is trying to get people reading her article to jump on the anti-immigration bandwagon by basically stating that since someone important thinks our economy is declining that we should listen to them. The problem with this argument is that this person was not being quoted on the fact that he thinks immigration is the root of this problem. Earlier in her paragraph with this quote Ling-Ling does use a quote from a poll that says “legions of working-poor immigrants contribute mightily to inflated poverty levels and declining per capita incomes”, but this quote and her appeal to authority essentially have nothing to do with each other.
In the last paragraph of this essay Yeh Ling-Ling says, “Deterioration quality of life affects natives as well as immigrants. Therefore, if Governor Gray Davis is serious about addressing Californians’ concerns, he should urge President Bush and Congress to adopt a moratorium on most categories of legal immigration and fund measures to curb illegal immigration.” This argument takes a dual position as an appeal to fear and a slippery slope. Ling-Ling is saying that if Governor Davis does not urge President Bush to take these actions, then our quality of life will deteriorate, hoping to get as many people on her side to stop immigration by instilling fear that our lives will essentially begin to become worse and worse as immigration continues. There is no information that states, however, that immigration is the reason for the deteriorating quality of life she speaks of. Though I agree that quality of life is important and does affect us all, quality of life is a personal matter that has nothing to do with outside sources, therefore her point is not only incorrect, but also invalid.
In reading this essay by Yeh Ling-Ling, it is easy to get swept up in the flurry of emotion and well-spun fallacies. However, in holding a magnifying glass to her words and exploring her points one by one, any person can easily see that her arguments have no true facts to back them up, that her accusations often have nothing to do with one another, and that she has haphazardly thrown together facts claiming that they have anything to do with one another. This does not sound like the kind of paper to take into consideration when trying to make such an important decision such as immigration policy. Though it is easy, we all need to remember that the most important thing in reading an opinion piece is to make sure not to get swept up in the author’s emotions, and remember to closely inspect the facts and fallacies used so that we as citizens of the great state of California do not get duped into agreeing to a policy we end up resenting.
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