Labor Log #2
Revision Task #1: Develop a clear claim about your information. Synthesize it to produce an answer to your research question. Currently your essay reads much like a kind of book report on the subject of immigration laws. Though it is very informative, it isn’t organized around a clear claim that your research suggests – for example a claim about a trend or trends associated with the social conditions are manifestations of immigration changes, or a claim about immigration laws have or haven’t affected social attitudes towards immigration, or some other organizing claim. This will give your paper a sense of focus and make it not just a regurgitation of information.
The main question that I revolved this essay on was “how have immigration polices changed throughout history”. The task was to develop a clear claim in response to the question. The claim that I have developed for this essay was “The way immigration laws have changed throughout history began with ethnic based restrictions to a broader restriction on immigrants from all over the world”. I found this to be a good claim for this essay since I started out the essay talking about the Chinese Exclusion Act, which talked about restricting only one ethnicity. Then talking about policies that the government has included that eventually led to restrictions from all over the world. While finally talking about recent immigration policies under Trump who is trying to reduce all immigration into the United States. All these transitions of immigration laws, led to many tensions within the United States, which also connects to the main idea of civil unrest. The central answer to the question I had for this essay helps connect all the ideas that I had in this essay. Rather than it just being a regurgitation of the information, I made more of an analysis of the laws and how it connected to the central claim.
Revision Task #2: The above task is so very important. So I’m considering it two tasks. See task one.
See task #1.
Revision Task #3: Revise moments in which you are placing blanket ethical judgments on historical moments, talking about what is right, wrong, good, bad or safe. Consider how these issues have been discussed and measured, and who these policies have been for and why.
I changed many parts of the essay where there was biased feedback on these laws such as good or bad. I made it more neutral while also including some more information on these laws. For example I included another outside source about the reasoning’s behind the Chinese ban and why the government at the time did such a thing. I also cut out a lot of parts near the end with Donald trump as I noticed the sentences were mostly against his policies, which is not what I’m trying to do. I also added in parts towards in the introduction and conclusion to make more sense with the overall claim of the essay. The information pertaining to whom these policies have been towards has also been added. For example in the beginning of the essay with African American getting the right to vote. I reduced the wordings that made it seem like it was the government’s fault for all of it. I included some more information from the same article that I thought would be useful for that.
Final Notes:
-Address a central research question.
The main question behind this essay was about how did immigration laws change throughout the history of the United States. I answered this question by including the central claim of “The way immigration laws have changed throughout history began with ethnic based restrictions to a broader restriction on immigrants from all over the world”. I included this idea throughout my essay initially however, I did not have a claim, which made it very confusing and disorganized. But with this claim now included throughout the essay, it makes it easier to follow along and know why I included some of the points. The sub points in this essay are the laws that are being made throughout the history, while the claims are how they have been developed as either ‘ethnic based’ or ‘broad based’. This essay seems to be more sensible than the first one and I think the layout of this essay was much better than the last one. However the one main thing that it was missing was the central claim to put everything together, which I now fixed.