United State is well-developed modern country of science and technology. With all the attractions, many people immigration to States to achieve their dreams. Especially in California, the fames of Hollywood, the endless blue beaches, the sunshine images, and high technology development are all the attractions to immigrants. According to PPIC – Public Policy institute of California records in 2006, between 1970 and 2006, the number of California residents born abroad has increased more than fivefold, from 1.8 million to 9.9 million. Immigrants, or foreign‐born residents, include those who have become naturalized U.S. citizens (website: http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/jtf/JTF_ImmigrantsJTF.pdf). Since the recession, or even start from the beginning of the economy declining, people started to question the ability of government. Some people blame the governor for the mess and some people blame the immigrants for drew back the State economy. Yeh Ling-ling is one of the people who blames that the immigrants’ policy is the reason that caused California social services a mess, including education. In her article “State Needs a ‘Time-Out’ from Mass Immigration”, she blames that the increasing of immigrants are to be blamed for California education program and other economic conditions failure. Thus, the arguments in her article content many fallacies that are weakening her opinions. Did the immigrants really cause the fortune of California? I question how strong her supports are in the article.
Ad Populum has been created since Yeh tries to convince everyone to believe what others believe. At the beginning, Yeh criticizes that California over spent the education budget for establishing the program for new immigrant children who can’t speak English and can’t understand what goes on in the classroom. She illustrates that California Department hired many teachers without proper credentials to deal with “English-deficient kids”. She then uses the public voters’ results from Zogby poll website to bring out how “most people” think about this over education spending affects California education system. According to Zogby poll released in 2005, “62 percents of voters” think immigrants are the reason why it is so hard for California education system to be reformed. Yeh emphasizes “66 percents” of this “62 percents” voters are Hispanics. She points out this “huge” percentage in order to convince the readers that only because “most” people think so, even the immigrants – Hispanics themselves, it must be right. However, the public votes could only tell how people think about the immigrants as a factor, but doesn’t mean their thought is correct Yeh takes advantage of the desire most people have to be liked and to fit in with others and uses that desire to get the readers to accept her arguments. On another hand, even Zogby International is a popular political pollster company, and their online votes are quite useful in some areas, it is still a just survey. Without actual numbers or data to be provided by official government, the surveys don’t approve that immigrants are the only reason California can’t reform the education system. For this reason, we can’t consider her argument as the truth.
Next, she seeks to convince readers by appeal to pity when she illustrates that “due to current economic woes, hundreds of thousands of workers in California, professional or low-skilled, are unemployed or underemployed.” Yeh tries to use another survey to approve her opinion, “Presently, more than half of California surveyed in the new poll are convinced that the area where they lives is in recession” The declining of the economy and the increasing numbers of the unemployed rate, have been frighten everyone since the recession. People easily connect themselves, or friends and families, to the situation. There is always someone around us that has been laid off since the recession. People all feel sorry for others, who lost their jobs, savings or even their houses and still have to supports the families. Although the facts are cruel, and this premise of an argument does support a particular conclusion, apparently, within this article it is not related to Yeh’s argument about the immigrants. She is missing her points by using this support here. The declining of our economy and unemployment are cause by various reasons. Not only California but the whole United State has been in the recession for years, even our government didn’t want admit it before 2007. Both the domestic policies and international policies are affected our economy. The gasoline rate, the currency exchange rates have been dramatically increased in the past years. Those changes make all the costs, from personal daily living costs to commercial production costs, to be increased. The war of Afghanistan has been dragging for years, also cost America billions or even trillions. All these important factors have to be taken into the consideration of the recession. Therefore, the immigrants’ policies are not the only reason, and might be just a small factor in the whole economic declining.
Towards to the end of Yeh’s article, she suggests if Governor Gray is really serious about addressing Californian’s concerns he should “urge President Bush [at the time] and Congress to adopt a moratorium on most categories f legal immigrations and fund measure to curb illegal immigration.” It sounds that the governor only has two choices: either let the California economy fall or change the immigration policies. This false dichotomy make it sounds that if the governor doesn’t urge the changes about immigration policy of United States and California, the economy situation of California would never be improved and it would keep declining. Certainly, the governor will not just let the economy fall. The elimination only left governor for one choice, which is to limit the immigrant’s benefits and change the immigrants’ policies in California.
Overall, Yeh attempts to use many “facts” to approve her points, that the immigrants are mainly causing California’s economy drawing down. She argues that as soon as stopping this “Mass Immigration”, all California’s problems will be solved. Immigrants might be one of the factors that affect the economy, but definitely not the only one. Nevertheless, Yeh’s supports have many fallacies, such as Ad populum, Appeal to pity, Miss the point and False dichotomy, which are really soften her arguments, and make people question about how strong her opinions stands. Besides the problems with immigrants, all other factors of the economy have to be taken into consideration as well. The falling economy, raising unemployment rate makes all people frustrating, but immigration policies are not the only thing to be blamed.
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