Rhetorical Analysis of Immigration Issue

Deciding who is legitimate: News media farming of immigrants and refugees international journal of communication 11(2017)

Canada has always been viewed in support immigrants and refugees owing to its relatively high immigration levels and comparatively favorable public opinion. According to International journal of communication 11(2017) Deciding who's legitimate: News Media Farming of Immigrants or Refugees , it is argued that Canadian support is uneven because they differentiate between economic immigrants and those who arrive on humanitarian grounds. This is also supported by an automated content analysis of Canadian print media coverage over a 10 year period ; an approach that allows a wide discourse capture and find distinctions between farming of immigrants and refugees .Here, immigrants are portrayed in economic terms, and whereas much focus is channeled towards the validity of refugee claims, potential security threats and the extent to which immigrants and refugees take advantage of social programs .Besides, more focus is given to the national rights of immigrants and refugees and that farming is viewed to be negative

The analysis here is sharply focused on illustration of the discursive distinctions that are drawn between immigrants and refugees coupled with their preferential hierarchy for the former over the latter.

The authors of the Deciding who is legitimate: Media farming of immigrants or refugees believes that there is strong support and consistency for immigration in Canada as opposed to public opinion towards refugees which is more variable as their main voice concern over legitimacy of refugee claims and public discourse around refugees often link the refugees to security threats and abuse of social programs .The media have also been found to disproportionately channel much of its focus attention on the economic impacts of migration, the use of social services by migrants, multiculturalism considerations and especially since 9/11 and migrants as security threats .This media framing on migration is of great influence to public opinion due to its creation of interpretations of the immigration system example they can either portray it to be too lenient or not accommodating enough ;cue specific considerations like security, legitimacy or need.

In order to address these limitations , the authors in the article have attempted to provide a longitudinal comparison with regards to media's framing of immigrants and refugees. This, has been demonstrated in the article by use of a detailed content analysis for examination of local and national print media framing of immigrants and refugees from 2005 to 2014.The local analysis coverage two targets of Canadians largest refugee receiving cities : Toronto and Vancouver analyses examination on whether print media coverage of refugees and by extension public discourse has become more negative in the past ten years .Secondly, this in comparison with the tone coupled with frequency of immigration related coverage and thirdly, how the framing of immigration and refugee related coverage varied over time ,geography and ethnicity of immigrants.

The article attempts rhetorically articulate that immigration is typically positioned as an economic imperative rather than a humanitarian or a social endeavor. This is owing to its reflection in the composition of immigration and refugee intake coupled with its reflection on Canadian's acceptance of immigration that is fundamentally tied to economic considerations. Public opinion indicates that the decline in Canadian saying that immigration levels are too high has roughly coincided with a sharp increase in the number who say that the economic impacts of immigration is positive .In 1993, 56% of Canadians concurred that immigration had a positive economic impact and the number rose to 82% by 2015.The authors rhetorically explain that even though migration levels have generally increased since 1980s , refugee levels have declined. As a result, both proportionately and in real numbers, Canada has witnessed a slow increase in skill-based admission of immigrants, and with a proportional decrease in the number of refugees admitted. A quarter of Canadians believe that immigrants take jobs away from Canadians; a sizeable lower number that one would expect given that economic competition is one of the principle motivators of opposition toward immigration. This aspect can be countered by more than half of the Canadians who believe that many refugee and immigrant claims are false or illegitimate .In a nut shell, although Canadians are open to immigrants as economic contributors, they are much more skeptical about the legitimacy of refugees .This is owing to their perception that immigrants are net economic contributors and they arrive through lengthy bureaucratic channels.

How Democrats Lost Their Way On Immigration July/August 2017

A decade ago, American liberals publicly questioned in many shocking ways. In this article, the author uses quotes like `Illegal migration wreaks havoc economically ,socially , and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law ; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone` Another quote also put across by the author written by a liberal columnist is that ` immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants..`the fiscal burden of low wage immigrants is also pretty clear`. These quotes are used to bring to the audience an understanding that there is need for reduction of inflow of low-skill immigrants. A decade ago, prominent liberals did not oppose immigration. Instead, they had acknowledged its benefits to the American economy and culture with support for undocumented citizenship. However, later on, they routinely asserted that low-skilled immigrants depressed the wages of low-skilled American workers and strained American welfare state. In addition, today, they say that they cannot continue to allow people to enter the United States undetected , undocumented ,and unchecked as those who enter the country's boarders illegally and those who employ them disrespect the rule of the law. By 2006, the party's America's immigration system was described to be problematic by the party's platform. And this focused almost entirely on the forms of immigration enforcement that were opposed by the Democrats .The 2008 platform in its immigration section ,people entering the country were considered as `illegal` .This was coupled with the idea that Krugman wrote citing the high increase in the number of low skill workers relative to the other inputs into production resulting to a fall of wages courtesy to the large number of immigrants.

The article also attempts to create a critical analysis on terms economists who differ about the extent of immigration damage. They cite that immigration hurts the Americans with whom immigrants compete against ; and since more than a quarter of Americans recent immigrants lack even a high school diploma or its equivalent, immigration particularly hurts the least educated native Americans workers.

In conclusion the author of the article in his summery says that a way of mitigating this problem would be scrapping off the current system which allows immigrants living in the U.S. to bring certain close relatives to the country , in favor of what Donald Trump in February called `merit based` approach that prioritizes highly skilled and educated workers . However ,the liberals critique this idea as an act of cruelty as it denies the immigrants in the U.S the ability to reunite with their loved ones besides flouting the country's best traditions.

REFERENCES

Deciding who is legitimate: News Media Framing of Immigrants and Refugees .International Journal of Communication 11(2017) How the Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration ,July/August 2017

Cite this page