An Analysis Of David Bacon's Mayday For Undocumented Workers

David Bacon, an award-winning photojournalist and author, spent twenty years as a labor organizer and immigrant’s rights activist. Many of the stories and photos published by him attempt to capture the courage of people struggling for social and economic justice. In his article, Mayday for Undocumented Workers, Bacon addresses the issue of animosity towards illegal immigrants within the American society. He argues that both the trade policy and immigration are “intimately linked” and that congress should stop passing free trade agreements, as they are the true cause of individuals migrating into the United States. However, these accusations seem to be fueled by Bacon’s own passion towards the subject, rather than factual evidence, as many

Just by looking at the title, Mayday for Undocumented Workers, readers can grasp the idea of what the author is implying, as most work’s titles often sets the tone of the passage. The word “Mayday” is used as a distress call for aviators during an emergency, and in this article the distress call is targeted towards immigrants. Furthermore, throughout the examination of this article there were many instances where the viewpoint of the author focused moreso on undocumented workers themselves, rather than the issue as a whole. For example, in this piece David Bacon expresses that the sign “we are workers, not criminals” (262) was “obviously true” because “ millions of people have come to this country to work, not break laws”(262). This draws the conclusion that immigrants are only here to work and nothing more, without any valid evidence to support this claim. Essentially, the tone and mood he sets in his article is used to convey his own attitude towards the

Firstly, Bacon declares that the removal of illegal workers would bring “many industries and businesses to a halt” (262) simply because there are 12 million people living without legal immigration status in the United States. Secondly, he concludes his argument by saying “the government is really after giving cheap labor to large employers.” (263), while there has been no hint previously in his argument that would lead readers to the same conclusion. Overall, every argument he makes has very little relation to the one before it, and gives the impression that he simply scrambled to gain audience support for his untrustworthy paper. The struggle of an illegal worker in America would most likely be supported by readers if they were offered even a shroud of evidence from Bacon, but he moves from paragraph to paragraph without giving any connection between his arguments, let alone any hint of where these opinions came