ESSAY QUESTION:
Please read and evaluate my essay.
The following appeared in the editorial section of a local newspaper:
“The inflow of immigrant workers into our community has put a downward pressure on wages. In fact, the average compensation of unskilled labor in our city has declined by nearly 10% over the past 5 years. Therefore, to protect our local economy, it is essential to impose a moratorium on further immigration.”
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. Point out flaws in the argument's logic and analyze the argument's underlying assumptions. In addition, evaluate how supporting evidence is used and what evidence might counter the argument's conclusion. You may also discuss what additional evidence could be used to strengthen the argument or what changes would make the argument more logically sound.
YOUR RESPONSE:
The statement, at first glance, seems convincing, however, upon further examination of the argument I find that the author bases his conclusion on several assumptions and he fails to take some factors into consideration before he arrived at his conclusion. For this reason, I find that the argument is, in fact, fundamentally flawed. I will explain how the argument can be improved in the up-coming paragraphs.
Firstly, the author assumes that the decrease in wages was caused by the inflow of immigrant workers. He doesn't, however, provide the evidence to make such claims. Furthermore, the author fails to consider that there could be other factors that affect compensation, such as inflation, recession, local unskilled worker population, etc... The argument could be strengthened if the author provided statistics of the of the payment of immigrant workers, the average number of unskilled immigrant workers in an organization, etc... as evidence the argument could be improved.
Secondly, the author assumes that the local economy can be protected if a memorandum is imposed on further immigration. If he doesn't take into consideration that the other factors, which are mentioned in the first paragraph, are causing the the decrease in wages the statement would be vulnerable to attack.
Finally, the author that the immigrant workers coming into the city are unskilled workers. The immigrant workers could be skilled people who are recruited from other countries to do the work required because the people with the right expertise are not available, which means that they are actually not competing with unskilled employees for less payment. The author's statement could be strengthened if he provided a statement that these immigrant workers are competing with the local workers and offering to do the work required of them for a lower wage.
In sum, I believe that the statement made could be solidified if the changes that have been suggested above were made.
This took me less than 30 mins. How is it?