In a recent article with LA Times, “Fleeing threats to her children, a Honduran woman now faces a tough fight for asylum,” Martin Garbus argues for the side of the defendant, a 25 year-old Honduran mother of four children, who applied for asylum in America. He appeals to his audience using her struggles back home in Honduras and her fear for her two daughters’ well being. Describing her past, Garbus reaches out to the audience tenderly to show the reader how little of a chance she has at obtaining asylum, how desperately she needs it and to prove, overall, that his client deserves asylum.
Arguing his point, Garbus uses sorrowful diction to convey just how against his client the odds are. He describes her situation with words like “dangerous” and “abandon” to show just how perilous her position is. Using these words, Garbus places the thought into the mind of his audience that, if they were in that situation, they would feel “terrified” and “helpless” to help themselves if forced to seek asylum through such a “grueling” and arduous process. The ultimate purpose Garbus has in using this rhetorical strategy is to help the reader relate to “G,” as he calls his client, so that they, too, understand how terrible and long such a process is in America.
I agree with the author’s argument, that “G” deserves asylum. This is because he has recorded her history and the ultimate reason she has fled Honduras: a group of men were threatening to rape her daughters. I believe that no one should have to go through that and I, for one, feel honored that “G” would flee to our great country to seek protection from her persecutors. I know a few people who have been sexually abused and also people who have siblings or friends who were sexually abused. I knowΒ that is not something anyone wants to have done to them. I know that this is not how God made women, as little toys for men to play with whenever they want, and I believe that if women are being treated that way or if they are being threatened with such a degrading act, we, as Americans who believe in “liberty and justice for ALL,” should be more than willing to protect someone in such a circumstance.
California Creative Writer 