would review one essential claim made W r i t i n g

Debating the Status of Undocumented Immigrants

Your challenge in the third paper is to develop a source-based argument about the undocumented. The most direct way of developing your paper would be to agree, or disagree with one or the other team of debaters that engage this issue on the Intelligence Squared Debate that we’ve reviewed in class. Of course, you can also agree in part disagree with various aspects of the debate. In developing your argument, draw on your DE notes from the debate transcript, from the Brookings report, “Do Immigrants Steal Jobs?” and from Camarota’s “Immigration and the Job Market.”

Keep in mind that in developing your argument, you will be comparing, or contrasting, both sides of the controversy. Writing this paper is an opportunity to practice argumentation in the tradition of controversia, the tradition that still forms the foundation of legal reasoning. Keep the core principles of this tradition in mind as you think about your approach to the third paper:

• Argument deals with probabilities but does not preclude our ability to defend one
• All opening positions are partial in the dual sense that they are biased in favor of their
• If we accept our partiality, we must also accept the possibility that exchange with others
• If we accept our partiality, we should be inclined to suspend judgment until all positions
• The ground rules for judgment in the context of probability do not depend upon formal

position as stronger than others.

own presumptions and they do not represent all that may be said about the subject.

could prompt us to change our minds.

have been addressed.

standards of logical certainty, but on the principles at play in the exchange between the parties engaged in conflict – in the evolving ‘epistemic standards of the audience.’

You are free to write your paper as either a dialogue (using Plato as a model) or as a conventional argumentative paper. If you write a dialogue, consider it as a continuation between two of the disputants in the Intelligence Squared debate we’ve listened to on the status of the undocumented.

If you elect to write a conventional argumentative essay, you will have a choice of writing your comparison/contrast in block fashion or point by point. In other words, you could develop the whole first half of your body to showing the case for the weaker argument, followed by the whole case for what you view as the stronger argument. If you develop your comparative argument in point-by-point fashion, you would review one essential claim made by the defenders of the undocumented, contrasted with a claim made by the critics of the undocumented, moving, contrasting point by contrasting point, through the development of your argument.

If you chose to write a dialogue, you will naturally follow a point-by-point style – as conversation naturally unfolds one point at a time. Do keep in mind that if you write a dialogue, you will need to cover all the essential argumentative bases (claim/reason/warrant) for both sides – as the conversation unfolds. Again, Euthyphro can serve as a fine model.

Citations: I will expect you to use in-text citations when you summarize, paraphrase, or quote one of the authors. When you are editing, be sure that you are using citations correctly. As you can see below, “Citations” is one of the categories in the rubric I will use to grade your paper, so your grade will be affected by the accuracy of your citations.

Using MLA citation style, you will simply use the last name of the author & page in your in-text citation. If you mention the author in your text, then you only use the page in your citation. Remember that the period comes after the citation. For example:

One of the authors asks the perennial question that every marriage partner is going to ask at some point in their marriage, “Stay or Go?” Her completely lame, disappointing, and exasperating answer is: “You can be happy either way” (McMillan 1). Or:

In “Being Happier as a Couple is Often a Mirage,” Tracy McMillan asks the perennial question that every marriage partner is going to ask at some point in their marriage, “Stay or Go?” Her completely lame, disappointing, and exasperating answer is: “You can be happy either way” (1).

Be sure to include your “Works Cited” Page that includes the full bibliographical information for all the texts you use in your paper. Use the handout in BB to review MLA citation style.

Format: The paper should be around three (double-spaced word-processed) pages. Use 12 pt. font, center the title on the first page (no title page) with name & Class printed in the upper left corner.

Be sure that you save your paper as a word document – not a PDF, or any other file format. Word is the only program I can use to give feedback on your paper.