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Illegal Immigration Sowell Analysis

Decent Essays

First and foremost, the two sides are aware of the arguments that the other presents and provide a counter argument with their own thoughts on the matter. For example, Sowell demonstrates his knowledge of the Arizona Sentinel newspaper by bringing up the idea of Amnesty in his essay and countering what is said about it in the Arizona Sentinel newspaper. In the Arizona Sentinel newspaper, it asks the question, “but what’s wrong with granting amnesty to hard-working, tax-paying individuals whose only crime is immigration status” (Arizona Sentinel)? This is countered in Sowell’s paper when he says, “…illegal immigrants must "earn" their citizenship. But if an ordinary American citizen gets a traffic ticket, the law is not going to just forget …show more content…

Each paper while providing some very good evidence also has its fair share of less than great evidence. For instance, the Arizona Sentinel says that most illegal immigrants are law-abiding citizens other than the fact that they themselves are illegal. This claim not only contradicts itself as illegal immigration is a crime no matter how to look at it, but a further look shows that this may not be true. A person cannot simply just say that other than robbing or murdering someone they are a law-abiding citizen. In the essay, it even claims that illegal immigration is a crime. It does not help prove its point by saying that they commit crime to begin with. It also claims that because they are law-abiding they will help drive crime down. The claim itself makes little sense as just increasing the amount of people who do not commit crime will not result in less crime. The people who commit crime are still going to do it regardless of how many people do not. Also, the act of illegal immigration is considered a crime which would only make the crime rate higher. Even the statistics used to support the claim does not work very well. After doing some research on Politifact website, it revealed that illegal immigrants in 2014 accounted for up to 75% of federal crimes (politifact.com). The essay would leave one to believe that it was less than it is. Not only that, but the evidence only mentions the 14% in state prisons and 5% in federal prisons. This does not account for immigrants who have not been caught illegally entering the country. All the claims made underline one point, the fact that most illegal immigrants do not commit crime, but the argument falls flat. This is certainly one of the weaker points of the paper compared to the rest and with different wording and better evidence can make a valid

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