Immigrants ought to fully assimilate culturally for the good of the host country

Thank you, Rikomalpense. Affirmative Case A1: People prefer other people of the same culture; having different cultural identities creates disunity I In his novel, On genetic interests: family, ethny, and humanity in an age of mass migration, Frank Salter argues that “Relatively homogeneous societies invest more in public goods, indicating a higher level of public altruism” [1]. The argument is there which shows cultural factors to be of relevance in regards to a stable/loving/caring community. As an example, further on in the novel, specifically on page 123, “…it follows that adaptive ethic nepotism not only selects for ethnic altruism, but for all gene-based characteristics distinctive to the group. This applies not only to traits with high heritability, such as cognitive profile… but to cultural traits passed on through socialization within the family…such as political culture” [2]. In English, what this means is that people are more likely to get along, be nice to each other and be more charitable if the other people are of the same culture. II To further support this conclusion, Professor J.P. Rushton, in his research paper, Ethnic nationalism, evolutionary psychology and Genetic Similarity Theory, found that spouse and best friend relationships were influenced by ‘opinions and attitudes’ with a correlation of 0.5, with other factors like ‘physical appearance’ only at 0.2. Only ‘age, ethnicity and education’ scoring higher (0.6) [3]. This means that for relationships of value, people are definitely basing relationships on cultural factors (i.e. opinions and attitudes). III Implicit Egotism is the way in which people gravitate towards places, people and situations that reflect themselves [4]. Implicit Egotism, as explored in a multi-academic circle by John T. Jones (United States Military Academy), Brett W. Pelham and Mauricio Carvallo (State University of New York at Buffalo) and Matthew C. Mirenberg (Columbia University), shows “…[the research paper’s] evidence suggests that implicit egotism is a valid and replicable phenomenon that influences people’s choice of a lifelong romantic partner in much the same way that it influences their evaluations of a stranger on a semantic differential” [4]. As indicated in J.P Rushton’s work, people will treat strangers (effectively other members of the community) differently based on their culture. Therefore, on average, the absence of cultural similarity creates more disunity than the presence of it, and this will generally make people less happy, friendly, altruistic and trusting of each other than would be found in a culturally homogenous community. A2: Language barriers For all the supposed benefits of children being bilingual, having multiple languages in a country hurts it, overall. Not all immigrants are bilingual, and even the ones that are still hurt a community to a lesser degree. I am going to show you the damaging result of differing languages in a community. I According to Psychology Today, as a generous estimate, 20% of Americans are at least bilingual (which includes children under 5 years) [11]. That means at least 80% are monolingual. Clearly, what this means is that the vast majority of Americans will not understand you if begin talking in a different language. Furthermore, nearly one in 10 working-age U.S. adults—19.2 million persons aged 16 to 64—is considered limited English proficient [13]. This means that these ~10% will not understand you or understand little if you begin speaking in a language other than the one they know. II Even with the 20% of Americans that are bilingual, there is still a problem. According to Testyourvocab.com, most native English adult speakers know 20,000-35,000 +/- 10% words, whilst most foreign learners of English know 2,500-9000 +/- 10%, which is significantly lower [9][10]. What this means is that bilingual people will have at most half ~45% the vocabulary of native English speakers, at worst an appalling ~5%. Remember that these are the bilingual immigrants. As you can see, bilingual people sacrifice greater competency in the languages they know. Obviously, preservation of these non-English mono-linguistic languages hurts the community because of the language barrier. Furthermore, as relating to my first argument, the differing (cultural) language creates a disunity. Counter-Arguments Foreign interaction “… Chances are, most members of society will have to deal with people of other cultures sometime in their career, especially if they join a trans-national company. Would it not be easier for people of different countries to interact if they were already used to the idea of multiculturalism?” The fallacy committed here is false equivalence [5]. My opponent assumes because people interact with different cultures, this is the same as people living with different cultures. It is obvious that the operative words of ‘interact’ and ‘living’ are not equivalent in meaning, hence the false equivalence. “…multiculturalism in a country encourages interest in bilingualism… it has also been found that bilingual people tend to do better academically… It was also found that in America, children of immigrant households of varying origins that were bilingual were less likely to drop out of school than the children of immigrant households that spoke only English (or mainly English)” This is an association fallacy, in which my opponent has confused association with causation [6]. In form, my opponent assumes that because bilingual students are less likely to drop out of school, that bilingualism has a serious correlation to this (hence “tend to do better”). All that has been shown in my opponent’s sources is that bilingualism is associated with higher marks, not that it is the cause of them. For example, in the first source used (number 3), to demonstrate the fault in the research with regard to this fallacy, “Block Design” was shown to be significantly higher in bilingual children than monolingual ones [8, page 51]. Block Design: “in this sub-test, children are shown patterns that they have to reproduce through the manipulation of several coloured blocks. It is a test of non-verbal, problem-solving ability and requires cognitive control” [8, page 49]. Please explain how knowing more words helps children do this and is not simply associated. “Full assimilation is also often forced, due to the fact that it is rare that immigrants wish to completely lose their original culture. This thus promotes the idea of cultural imperialism in the host country, which also is not conducive towards international relationships.” The initial anecdotal evidence essentially renders the latter a bare assertion, in that anecdotal evidence is insufficient in debate, so much so that it is a fallacy [7]. Loss of beneficial cultural traits “To give an example, East-Asians, a large part of the immigrant population in many countries such as America and Canada, tend to do better in school than their non-immigrant counterparts. This has been determined to be the result of a culture that believes academic success to be a result of hard work rather than of innate ability [4].” This is an outright lie: (from the source) “these findings SUGGEST [what my opponent said]” [14]. NOT “this has been determined”, thank you. To show that these suggestions are not correct, I’ll reference work that has been done in this field. From his study, Elliot Tucker-Drob calculated that roughly 58% of GSCE (final year in high school) marks are attributed to genetics [15]. From the documentary called “Brainwash: The Parental Effect”, Robert Polmin (of the Adoption Project, an organisation that tracts the effects of adopted children), stated that genetic differences accounted for 50-60% of academic results. Leif Edward Ottensen Kennair (a Norwegian psychologist) stated that genetics accounted for 60% of academic results, AND that the “family environment” accounted for 10% [16]. This FIRMLY DENIES that culture is the only determinant of academic success, and shows that innate ability plays a larger role than culture, indicating that culture has far less to do with academic success than my opponent would imply. Less rebellion, more unity “…By doing this, Canada encourages the idea that Canadians are still Canadian no matter what their native language or culture, allowing people of different cultures and origins to identify as Canadian. This is done without creating resentment by heavily discouraging their native culture, as full assimilation often means.” It does not matter what the intentions of the government are. As demonstrated with my initial argument, people will naturally divide, dislike and discriminate based on cultural differences. References [1]http://books.google.com.au... [2] http://books.google.com.au... [3] http://www.euvolution.com... [4] http://new.dixie.edu... [5] http://www.skepticalraptor.com... [6] http://rationalwiki.org... [7] https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com... [8] http://ijb.sagepub.com... [9] http://testyourvocab.com... (Average adult vocabulary) [10] http://testyourvocab.com... (+/- 10%) [11] http://www.psychologytoday.com... [13] http://www.brookings.edu... [14] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com... [15] http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk... [16]