2nd DDO Census Debate: Syrian Refugees

First to cover some of the OV's again, Pro continued to falsely accuse us of dropping arguments while at the same time not explaining which arguments we "dropped". We never said that Con was required to present an alternative, This is absolutely false. Pro said this multiple times in the debate. Con then compares the lack of offering an alternative to Con sustaining that absolutely no refugees should ever be adopted in the United States. This is an incredible stretch, and very inaccurate. The rebuttal from Con was that these refugees specifically were not wanted for various reasons. Pro's "OV3" was a wasted paragraph on a mis-interpretation of what we said. We didn't say that their side didn't have values, just that value comparison is worthy to judge over "who best serves refugees", in which case we had no interest. Pro's OV4 fails to site where we made a national security argument, and where they "quoted us". There is a difference between us saying refugees are a national security problem, and us acknowledging that people view refugees as a national security problem, and that their concerns should be heeded. Discrimination and finances Discrimination On our map of where refugees are located at I actually laugh out loud when I read that Pro thinks these areas are all "discrimination free zones" and that they were all liberal. It seems a little naive to make an assumption that places like Salt Lake City Utah are liberal zones.(1) Or the areas near Tampa and Miami (2), or Oklahoma (3), etc. I could seriously just keep listing out some of these cities that are heavily republican and waste too many sources and character space going over just how wrong Pro is about this map being so liberal. Sure there are liberal areas but that means absolutely nothing to the point we were trying to make with the map, and that is that they are randomly distributed across the states. Also assuming that a pre-dominantly liberal area is going to be safe from any of any republicans who might be discriminatory at all is flawed. But even then all this argument is useless. Discrimination wasn't as big a point for us as Pro is trying to make it out to be. For the second time, the whole purpose for including this point was to counter Pro saying that they are receiving discrimination elsewhere in Greece and Europe. All we were ever trying to say here was that the United States isn't going to be any better. Again this is a rebuttal, not our own point. Finances Pro claims his source 26 shows a number of petition signers while at the same time AGAIN refusing to quote that number from his source. Pro is putting a lot of faith in imaginary numbers. Saying "hundred" of Americans are offering up there homes is not enough. Hundreds could literally mean 2-300. Obama's plan is to accept 10,000 refugees. Even the fact that less than 1000 of these refugees not having homes is a problem, because they are going to have to rely on this meek stipend to live on. Secondly, this stipend is managed and used for apartment's only, unlike Pro's assumption that they receive it regardless. Referring back to source one from R3, "They ensure the rent will be affordable and are in charge of distributing the stipend to cover the costs of rent for three months. " It's clear that refugees who are getting housed instead of an apartment will not receive this stipend. However, even if they were, that wouldn't even be touching a tenth of the entirety of the refugees coming into the country. Pro continues to mis-understand the Stipend by assuming that they will be getting 1000$ per month for three months. Did they deliberately misconstrue that so it would benefit them in the final round? Here is the quote again, same source 1 from last round. Each refugee receives a stipend of about $1,000 to cover their first three months in the U.S. Pro is practicing the idea of success of these refugees in the states to hope and dreams. Going back to the mis-presented source (33), it seems Pro also does a "piss poor" job of checking his own source. Let's forgive the fact that they utterly denied to quote specifics from the source, and just picked out the lines that benefited them IE "Refugees are more likely to succeed than American's" part. "Three out of the ten largest origin groups of refugee men [Burmese, Iraqi, and Somali] had lower employment rates than U.S. Born men" Pro's own source demonstrates that their are differences based on Origin Groups. For this point to be effective Pro needed to drop specific details on Syrian refugee progression in the states. The fact that a closely related Iraq is mentioned as having lower employment rates than U.S. born men already hurts his point. While we still on this source, I think it is important to mention that on page 6, his own source contradicts his education argument. The source talks about how many refugees have less than a high school diploma education and follows up by saying: "The U.S. resettlement program's heavy emphasis on getting refugees into jobs quickly may leave little room to support their ongoing education." Read also: in 2009-11 more than half of refugees from Somali, Iraq, Burma, Bhutan, and Liberia had household incomes below twice the federal poverty level- versus one third of U.S. Natives". This is a repeat of an argument we made in round 2 already, but the interesting part is that this is from Pro's own source. You can't just pick and choose what you want to hear from a source. The good comes with the bad, and Pro damages his own case with this one. Even the data he mentions on page 20 includes these details that he thought best left out of his argument. It's called spin when you quote something to manipulate a point. The problem with spin is that is has truth to it, yet ignores many factors. All of these points aside, let's not forget Pro is advocating giving thousands of dollars in stipends, transportation to the states, and future reliance on benefits (food stamps, unemployment, etc) on homeless people from another country. On a single night in January 2014, 578,424 people were experiencing homelessness " meaning they were sleeping outside or in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program. (4) According to this source 49,933 of these homeless individuals are veterans, and another 45,205 of these are children. Maybe we should focus on solving our own homeless problems before focusing on housing 10,000 homeless refugees. Prioritizing Public Views Pro states that we haven't offered any Negative impacts in having refugees in the country, completely ignoring cost arguments, security perceptions, and and the over-arching violation of democracy arguments. To be clear, the president violating the majority of the countries wishes to adopt a public image, destroys the effectiveness of state sovereignty, and undermines the pre-tense of power anyone might feel they have with their voice in this country. When you directly ignore the wishes of your own country, your facing way bigger problems then putting on a good image for Syria. We are not just adhering to false paranoia, as Pro construes it. We are validating logical and thorough concerns of our own citizens, concerns that are very justified. He seems focused on saying that we are basically arguing that ISIS is a threat. This is a blatant lie. We said their propaganda and the effects they have on US opinion is real, making us a bad place to place Refugees. So as Pro did, let's summarize why you are voting Con. First Pro's sources were terrible. There were numerous occasions where Pro just outright doesn't quote important information from a source, information that you have to dig to find (a 60+ page document inside of a page for example that pro waits until the last round to try and post relevant information for, only to be found that it was contradictory to other information in that source). Pro posts sources that simply don't have the necessary information to back the point he is making (IE, the "hundreds of Americans offering homes" point). Pro posts sources that literally prove little to nothing (IE source 44. First of all what does this source do for your case? Show an underwhelming amount of online signatures supporting acceptance of refugees exists?). If this isn't source spamming, as Pro claims in the comments that it is not, then what is? There were multiple other sources like this in the debate. It detracts from the debate when you post a lot of evidence that isn't really evidence or doesn't serve an important purpose in the debate. Second, I say without restraint that Pro's conduct was utterly horrible. Between wrongly accusing us of dropping points, mis-construing our burdens, placing false arguments in out mouths, and all the virtual muscle flexing (see OV1), Pro has turned what could have been a fun debate between two people with similar beliefs into a classic black and white debate, which this resolution should be anything but. We the Con feel we have served the true nature of debate by focusing strictly on the arguments and moving past all the other "bull crap" that didn't need to be in the debate. Further we have properly refuted the resolution by valuing prioritization of the Country itself, while also not stepping into the territory of having to make arguments we don't agree with. In a devils advocate debate, that is an accomplishment. It is for these reasons we urge the voters to vote Con. While we wish this debate went differently, we still thank the Pro for their time and effort in this debate. Sources: 1. http://tinyurl.com... 2. http://tinyurl.com... 3. http://tinyurl.com... 4. http://tinyurl.com...