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Rhetorical Analysis Of President Barack Obama On Immigration

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Immigration has been a continuous cause of economic vitality and demographic drive throughout our nation’s history. Immigrants are store owners, entrepreneurs and consumers. Today more than ever our immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed. The immigrant population consisted of 40.7 million people in 2012. Broken down by immigration status, the foreign-born population was composed of 18.6 million naturalized U.S. citizens and 22.1 million noncitizens in 2012. Of the noncitizens, approximately 13.3 million were legal permanent residents, 11.3 million were unauthorized migrants, and 1.9 million were on temporary visas. Due to this extreme over population in the U.S. President Barack Obama has made a speech addressing this issue. In …show more content…

In his speech, the President strongly expresses his attitude towards the nation’s current immigration status and the need for change. Obama is able to connect with his audience through three dimensions: ethical, logic and emotion which is also known as ethos, pathos and logo. Through these forms of rhetorical arguments, President Obama widens the range of his audience, both liberal and conservative. The President explains the rights and wrongs of the current immigration system that is in this country. His use of words provide situations, which applies to the majority of Americans. He puts in ethos when arguing the idea of amnesty, which is the current method to the immigration system in the United States. “Mass amnesty would be unfair. Mass deportation would be both impossible and contrary to our character.” (Obama) This puts moralistic values of each American into perspective and ultimately asks: Is this justice? Continuing on the idea of right and wrong, President Obama presents either-or situations, which questions the decision of American citizens. “Felons not families, criminals not children.” (bonniedevenney) By using an either-or fallacy, the argument is limited to only two options, and one is usually more supported than the other. President Barrack Obama also uses logic to connect with his

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