Editorial Criticism #1

In an article talking about the negative effects of limiting the visas for skilled foreign professionals, The Washington Post persuades it’s readers that this new policy is irrational. The article is geared towards readers who are pro-immigration and unaware of the complete facts about foreigners to the United States.
First of all, in the very first paragraph the skilled foreigners the article speaks of are noted as being “promising, intelligent, ambitious and highly skilled foreign professionals,” which there is no evidence to say they are not all of these things, but the author obviously has a biased opinion and does not stay neutral. The author continues to make Americans look like the bad guys with too much patriotism and pride to accept the brainpower from foreigners. In many respects the article may be true in that Americans are a very proud people who believe that their skills should be exploited before the skills of foreigners. However, the article talks about how the United States is contradicting itself by accepting and unlimited amount of foreign students to it’s universities and subsidizing their education in technical fields but then makes it impossible for them to obtain jobs, but does not address the fact that for many of the most competitive universities in the United States, foreign students are given priority for admittance. Does this not show our appreciation of the brainpower and work ethic of foreign students?
The article lacks substantial evidence to support its argument. The number of applicants for H-1B work visas for the last year is stated but there is no reference to where the information came from and if it is reliable at all. The same goes for the information about the number of applicants that received visas compared to in the past; the information is just stated and not accounted for.
The article concludes that the United States is harming itself because of its lack of acknowledgement of the need of foreign workers to keep our economy thriving, which I can agree with, but I do not agree with the arguments that support this accusation. The article is written for a specific audience, one that would be against those that are anti-immigration and does little to analyze the other end of the situation, that the United States has to maintain a certain amount of jobs for Americans that were born in the United States in order to provide a place in the economy for it’s own citizens.