Étude d'un document sur la politique d'immigration aux États-Unis (document en anglais)

Devoir Maison d'Anglais

Doug Marlette, The Charlotte Observer

« Obama unilaterally shielded nearly 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation but amnesty advocates say it's not enough » BBC NEWS, 21 november 2014. <---- Made by Queen Ayat.

This document is a cartoon drawn by Doug Marlett, an American cartoonist. It was published in the newspaper ''The Charlotte Observer but we don't know when. This cartoon talks about immigration because we can see the Statue of Liberty, a man looking the monument and a poem.

It makes us wonder : Why is this document a criticism of the immigration politics in United States ?

First, we are going to describe this document and then we will analyse it.

The document is composed of two parts : a picture and a text. We can see on this picture a monument and one person. On the left there is the Statue of Liberty and on the right there is a man. The man has dark hair, he is wearing a torn white shirt with a torn black trousers. He is holding a suitcase where we can read « Haïti » iin his left hand. We see this man from the back because he is looking at the Statue of Liberty. We can recognize the Statue of Liberty at the left of the picture but her face is a bit different because her mouth is open. She is sad. The man probably comes from a different country propably from Haïti because of his suitcase so he is an immigrant who comes in United States to live a new life. At the bottom of the document we can read the poem «  Give me your rich, your famous, nobel laureates, your russian poets and polish emissaries, your respectable white anti soviets yearning to breathe free … », the Statue of Liberty is talking to the man. She is giving him the conditions to enter in the United States.

We can see that the man has travelled for a long time because of his clothes, they are all torn. He seems to be tired but he can't really see how he is feeling because we don't see his face. The immigrant is looking at the Statue of Liberty so maybe he is thinking about his new life in United States. He came here to live the American dream, he is starting from nothing and he want to be rich. The poem give us a different opinion : if you are not rich, not famous then you don't have your place in America.

We know that the United States were built on immigration. The first who came on the land was the puritans who left Europe cause of persecutions. Then to avoid the Second World war a lot of people came in the United States from Europe and Russia. America always welcomed people who were in difficult positions but now it's different. Most of the immigrants when they come are poor and they have nobody to help them when they come in the country. The man is looking at the Statue of Liberty but he seems to be lost in front of the greatness of the Statue of Liberty. There is a contrast between the man and the monument, it's about the size : the Statue of Liberty is 3 times bigger than the man. So here, the monument is a symbol of America. He is lost in the immensity of the United States with nobody to help him.

Doug Marlett is making a criticism of the American government.

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