"Refugees haven't changed. What has changed is the heart of the free world." --- Rhetorical Precis

In Andrew Lam’s Open Editorial “Refugees haven’t changed. What has changed is the heart of the free world.”(11/08/15) he argues that refugees have always existed and have always been leaving their countries for the same reasons and that the only difference is how the “Free World” has begun to treat them in the Post-Soviet Era. The author first asserts his argument through the use of paraphrase to show how refugees were once treated like “cultural heroes” and how the same refugees escaping from the same oppressions are being treated like “unwanted trespassers”; he then strengthens his argument by employing the use of Juxtaposition to directly compare the treatment of refugees in the Soviet Era and modern day refugees; and to conclude he closes his editorial by using a rhetorical question to ask how the international community will bring an end to the crisis; in order to make the reader think of the near future. The authors purpose is to argue that refugees have not changed their reasons for escaping their homelands, but it is the free world that has changed across the decades in order to assert that the refugee crisis is by no means a new problem orm a problem caused by the refugees themselves. The author seem to have an American or Western nation audience in mind because of how he constantly refers to American and Western examples such as Reagan's speech and the story of Conrad Schumann and his leap over the Berlin Wall. 

(Article can be found here)