The writer of article one relies on strong and emotive language to get her point across and to get people to see her point of view. She also tries to win a ‘sympathy vote’ by starting to blame the asylum seekers for our second rate education system, long waiting lists for operations, people dying on hospital trolleys in corridors and the inadequacies of our social services system. In a way the author is right but for the wrong reason, ‘that there are so many of them’. She also tries to make the reader feel a bit hard done to by the government by commenting on how in Leeds the asylum seekers have got their own mobile health clinic when normal British people ‘can’t get to see a G.P for love nor money’, in actual fact this is because the G.P’s won’t take them on because they don’t speak English and that they have too many patients as it is. The real reason for the lack of quality in our UNDERFUNDED public services is that to keep these asylum seekers housed and give them benefits costs more than to put them up in a top notch hotel for that night, and at two hundred and fifty hundred pounds a night for one hundred thousand legal immigrants a year that is over twenty five million pounds a day. If we stopped this, the government would have an abundance of money to spend on the public services. All these arguments may be valid but because they are not backed up by evidence they are more likely to be hear-say.
Article 2 does not need to rely on angering the readers, the writer just backs up his argument with lots of facts and figures, even using a report by a government official, Harriet Sergeant, the author of an exposition looking at the problem of asylum seekers, this is where the author takes most of his figures from. Using this he argues that of the one hundred thousand people who seek asylum every year ninety eight percent are rejected, but only a handful will ever be required to leave the country. On top of this he takes from the report the fact that there are possibly two hundred thousand extra illegal immigrants coming onto our shores every year. He uses these facts to back up his argument that a country of sixty million just can’t accept this number of extra people every year. This compared to article one is very convincing when article one only describes how there are so many immigrants and does not use any acts or figures to back up the argument. Article two also looks at the reason for the asylum seekers being here. The writer talks about how very few are actually persecuted by there own government, they are just victims of political incompetence. He also talks about how many of the asylum seekers are ‘Cruelly’ held in limbo for years while the government try to sift through the hundreds of thousand of applications that are backlogged. This all gives the impression of a much fairer and two sided argument compared to article one which is just ranting and raving, trying to make the person reading it hate the asylum seekers.
Although article one criticises the government’s handling of the whole affair it does not suggest any ways of controlling the problem. However article two looks at the problems the Germans had with Turkish immigrants and how they dealt with the problem. It explains how Germany had an equally un-sustainable influx of mostly political refugees from Turkey and how it stopped this by refusing entry to anybody trying to enter through a country where human rights were protected. If Britain did this there would be almost no immigrants as we are an island surrounded by countries where human rights are almost over protected. This again shows how article two is looking at the problem in a much more useful way by suggesting ways that we can counter this surge of refugees. This article doesn’t look at the situation with our public services because it has almost nothing to do with asylum seekers. Article one has just used this argument to try and anger the reader. She doesn’t talk about the rights of British people, as article one does again because he doesn’t need to while article one has to really upset her readers to get a response.
The language used is one of the big differences between the articles, the language in article one is more uncouth than article two giving the impression of how angry and upset the writer is about the whole situation. While the author of article one is a lot more calm and collected. For example, both writers talk about David Blunkett and the handling of the Sangatte refugee centre in Calais. Article one comments ‘David Blunkett said he was going to try to get to grips with the asylum problem, well he had better do more than bloody try’. Article two on the other hand says ‘I fear that David Blunkett’s very public intervention over Sangatte may be calculated to give the impression that he is in control of the problem. He isn’t’. If we look at the two statements it shows clearly the difference between the two writers and the types of audience they are aiming their article at. Article one is quite clearly more aggressive and is aimed to get a response from people who will take this article straight to their heads and despise asylum seekers and David Blunkett, while article two is aimed at somebody who wants to view the crises in a more open minded manner. The writers have written in this way because of the papers that they are writing for, article one is written in the mirror which the more intellectual people like bank managers and business people tend not to buy while the other is in the Mail which these people do tend to buy and these people are going to want to read very good writing which is fair not the aggressive one sided writing that appears in the Mirror.
The way that the two articles are laid out is completely different. Article one is less eye catching but the two main arguments stand out, the heading Land of milk and honey? Not here is implying that this country is too relaxed and easygoing towards the asylum seekers. Also the second main argument that makes up her whole article is right in the middle the statement ‘It’s time we took care of our own’ These two headlines are in bold print to catch the readers eye. These headlines are quite successful in grabbing the reader’s attention. Especially because the article is on a page full of other stories and no pictures.
Article two is set out in a much more eye catching manner with a large bold headline with whit writing on a black background, compared to the text which is the other way round and a big picture of people defending asylum seekers, calling the people who want to stop the influx of them ‘Racists’, this ties in nicely with the headline ‘It’s cruel to make this racism smear’. I think that this article is set out in a much better manner as it is eye-catching and the headline makes it look interesting.
I think that article two is far more successful because after I read it I came away with an impression that, yes there are too many asylum seekers and yes the government has made a huge meal of it, but I also understand the plight of these refugees and sometimes they can get quite poor treatment. I also now have a view on what can be done to solve the problem. Before reading this article my stance was very similar to the one taken by the writer of article one.
Because I read article one first I started by agreeing with it and I did connect and the words had quite a big impact upon me. But this did not last as I soon read the second article. However if someone e was just to read this I believe that it could be very successful in making them see the writer’s point of view.
By Richard Smith, St Ambrose College
