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My Life As An Undocumented Immigrant Analysis

Decent Essays

Jose Vargas tells the story of his life; from coming to America, finding out that he is residing here illegally, learning how to live with that, and finally to sharing with everyone that he is an undocumented immigrant. Jose has a difficult task in front of him, though. He must win his audience over to his side so that he can further his agenda of developing an easier path for undocumented immigrants to receive citizenship. There are many ways he could go about this, trying to skirt the topic of his illegal activities, but Jose is an intelligent man and knows how to influence his audience. He uses the story of his life to connect with others, and in connecting with them wins them over, even if only indeterminably so. In My Life as an …show more content…

By showing that he is gay, but it’s not all that he is, and that he has endured struggles, but he’s overcome them, he creates a connection with other homosexuals.
Vargas is able to connect with people who have anxiety and depression by showing how much he struggled in these same areas throughout his life. The stress caused by the question his Lola presented, “What will happen if people find out,” caused him tremendous emotional trauma and led to his bouts with anxiety and depression. This question comes up again and again throughout the story and was most likely a motivating factor in why he ended up telling everyone. By considering this emotional aspect of his life in his essay, not only does Vargas create an empathetic bond between him and people struggling with these mental disorders, but he also creates a sympathetic bond with other readers aware of this disorder and the devastating effects it can have on a person.
He also creates a very strong and intimate bond with other immigrants throughout the entire paper. He used pathos by telling the story of his own immigration, of the day he was brought to America, and of having to jump through certain loops to stay under the radar. He discusses having to lie to friends and coworkers and not being able to obtain a driver’s license or job without going to the extremes. By laying out every obstacle he had to jump over he immediately creates credibility and a link between him and other

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