Introduction
Eileen Sullivan’s article, Many Migrants Are Quickly Expelled, but Others Can Stay. Here’s Why in The New York Times is dedicated to the Title 42 of the United States Code: how and why it was used, which categories of migrants are allowed to stay despite the rule, and how the Biden administration plans to lift it. The information presented in the article is proven and unbiased by the author’s personal opinions; however, it is poorly structured and not explained enough. The first out of these three point is the article’s main advantage, but the other two are its major disadvantages.
Summary
The essay is a news article dedicated to the U.S. migrants’ thematic. It describes a rule named Title 42 and how it was used to repel migrants due to their health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article consists of an introduction and five sections, each of which is dedicated to a bunch of facts connected with the current migrant problems; those are primarily ones from Mexico. The introduction formulates the main idea: Title 42, its usage to enforce migrants to leave the United States, plans to lift it, and the current exception from this rule. Examples of the public condemnation of the practice are also described (Sullivan). Then, there are sections where the migrants’ categories who are allowed to stay in the U.S. despite the rule are described, along with the Biden administration’s step to lift the rule. The article is written in a neutral and objective style, with high information quality, which is its clear advantage. It has two disadvantages, however: the poor information structuring and unclear explanation of mentioned facts. Those points will be described thoroughly in the corresponding sections.
Migrants’ categories that are allowed to stay in the U.S. are presented in several article sections: migrants’ children, several especially vulnerable categories, and those who cannot go back. The first category includes children under the legal age who arrived without any parent or guardian; they became allowed to stay legally in February 2021 (Sullivan). It was the first step of the Biden administration to ease migration to the United States and extend migrants’ rights. The second one is about transgender people, those living in dangerous regions, and other categories that are not fully described in the article (Sullivan). The third category consists of citizens of countries that refuse to accept them when the United States officials repel them. It was the strategy adopted by Venezuela, Cuba, China, and other countries. (Sullivan). While technically, their citizens are illegal migrants, they cannot be legally expelled and thus, stay in the U.S.
Problems connected with Title 42 usage are also described in several sections. An example is a border overload which is presented as the reason for the Trump administration to use Title 42 extensively (Sullivan). In 2020, during the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, the flow of migrants from Mexico became extremely large, and measures were required to manage it. The implementation of the rule by the Trump administration greatly reduced the time needed to turn a migrant away at the border, making it legally easier to repel them. It allowed to reduce the load on the border’s workers; however, it extremely hardened the lives of migrants themselves (Sullivan). Before February 2021, all children who illegally arrived in the U.S. were repelled, no matter how dangerous their voyage might be. Thus, migrants’ rights were actually violated, creating hazards for their lives and well-being.
Information Accuracy
The overall level of information quality and accuracy is high: all facts and events contain links to sources where they may be further investigated. All information presented in the article is recent; there are some examples that are relevant to the situation, such as the 2006 China’s refusal to accept its citizens who were illegal U.S. migrants (Sullivan). It is a news article and, thus, it is focused on providing and explaining recent facts and events rather than describing what they mean and where they came from. The main article’s advantage is that the information is high-quality, supported by reliable sources, and free from unreasonable judgements.
Information Interpretation
As mentioned, while the information quality is high, its interpretation and presentation are sometimes unclear. For example, it is hard to understand quickly what Title 42 means and where it came from, especially for those not familiar with the U.S. laws. The author implies that the government uses this rule to turn away migrants based on their health problems. However, she does not reveal how and when Title 42 was implemented: only examples of its recent usage (Sullivan). In that way, the main idea of the article may be hard to comprehend.
Another issue of the article is a lack of a clear structure: while the introduction is clearly and consistently formulated, the rest of the article seems like a bunch of poorly interconnected facts. While all of them are connected with the initial idea of the Title 42 situation and substantiated, they are not properly connected with each other. It creates a feeling of getting lost during the reading of the article. For example, migrants who are allowed to stay despite Title 42 are mentioned in several article sections, but no clear list of migrants who are eligible is present. According to Sullivan there are, in fact, three categories of such migrants: children, vulnerable ones, and those who are not able to return. They are described in three separate sections, which are not directly interconnected; in addition, while several examples of vulnerable migrants are present, there is no clear description of this category (Sullivan). Thus, while the article’s information has a good quality and is mainly unbiased, it is poorly structured and somewhat hard to read.
Overall, the article has not a clear structure where the facts connected with the current Title 42 situation are presented; it also has no conclusion. Instead, it has five sections where separate bunches of facts are presented; no specific connections between sections are present. The article’s main idea is consistently formulated in the introduction: at first, plans of the Biden administration to lift the Title 42 rule are mentioned. Then, the author describes problems raised by its implementation, along with categories of migrants who are eligible to stay despite the rule. In that way, the article has two main disadvantages, both connected with information’s interpretation: unclear explanations and a lack of a clear structure.
Conclusion
The article is dedicated to the usage of Title 42 to repel migrants from the United States: reasons for that, current challenges, and the Biden administration’s plans to lift this rule. Eileen Sullivan formulates those objectives in the introductions; the rest of the article is dedicated to their explanation and providing facts to show how they are realized. The author does not present her personal judgments or opinions; instead, she provides facts and cases, which is the main article’s strength. However, its two major weaknesses are a lack of clear classification and somewhat poor explanation, which make it harder to read and comprehend. Overall, it is average in achieving the purpose of informing readers about the Title 42 usage: while they may understand what is it and who may stay despite that, migrant categories are still poorly described.
Work Cited
Sullivan, Eileen. “Many Migrants Are Quickly Expelled, but Others Can Stay. Here’s Why.” The New York Times, Web.