Except When There Is A Clear Threat to National Security, This House Believes That It Is Illegitimate for Western States to Limit Immigration from Developing-World Countries

Or ignore the first part of the wording of the motion, in order to make interpreting this debate more simply.

…or maybe not.

…..but maybe also yes.

So, “This House Believes That It Is Illegitimate for Western States to Limit Immigration from Developing-World Countries” and let’s do the motion dissection.

First, illegitimate means illegal. But here’s the catch: debating the tone of this motion by consulting explicitly in conformance to the word “illegal” would mean whether this course of action complies to which clause according to which settlement or agreement or treaty. And that debate will be very unfair for debaters who don’t happen to be studying law. We highly recommend interpreting it this way instead: “that it should be illegitimate for western states” – that way, the debate becomes much more discussable for an average reasonable person to process, as then the parameter for what should be illegitimate and what shouldn’t be is going to be based on ethicalities, a much more debatable ground. The boundaries between morals and ethics are arbitrary and vary greatly from person to person (Is killing one to save many moral? Is denying someone from their death moral?) but people can connect with that issue more easily than to the degree of compliance from a course of action towards a certain clause.

Second, western states. This should make the debate clearer and narrower, as you are going to analyze what courses of action in the past have been moral and immoral (you need them for comparison). But, remember, the aspect of 1^st-2^nd-3^rd-person applies greatly in terms of perspective. An action could be interpreted as moral in the eyes of the 1^st-person (you), but it could also mean as very immoral in the eyes of the party you applied your action towards to (the 2^nd-person). As a general rule of thumb, debate this motion on a neutral perspective, the 3^rd-person, the observer, the spectator. We recommend a characterization of UNFPA, or UNDP, or UNESCO. Or just simply UN as a whole. All debaters and adjudicators should picture themselves as that international body which is going to govern over this issue and rule this course of action as being legitimate or not, based on the morality spectrum and scale.

Third, limiting immigration. Erm.. pretty straightforward here, just a simple analysis of good-vs-bad, value judgment, cost-vs-benefit, profit-vs-harm, bla bla bla, your standard issue. Nothing new here. But remember, in regards to a western state doing this, judging from the perspective the UN.

And towards developing-world countries. And that’s the fourth and the last aspect of this motion dissection. Like, as in, why do we only discuss about receiving human beings from them, and not about receiving homoses sapienses from other more well-developed countries. Characterization. Again.

That being said, let’s go!

Oh, no, no, wait, wait. Almost completely forgot about one more last thing. Now we insert back the first part of the wording of the motion, “except when there is a clear threat to national security”. Well, tough luck, Team Affirmative, you have to insert another one extra clause to all of your arguments that asserts why this ‘clear threat to national security’ is a sound and valid exception to negate all your arguments you have properly established as precedence. It’s an annoying extra burden of proof for you, indeed, but it’s not huge. Just 2-3 simple sentences that could clearly explain why that would serve as a valid exception, make it sound convincing, and, yeap, you’re set.

Okay, NOW, let’s go.

Team Affirmative

1. Because this motion will balance the scale of competition.

Let’s talk about the ideals behind Marxism first. Acquisition of private property through inhumane means, and the aftermaths of liberalist, capitalist, and mercantilist economics. The fact is that most of our developed countries acquired their wealth through brute force, through imperialism and colonialism. This unfair acquisition thus created an uneven and unequal scale and balance of trade. All of resources are concentrated on wealthier states, and are scarce in developing-world countries. Even human resources. What this motion proposes is a venue in which competition can be made fairer even though just a tad lil’ bit. Explore more about the benefits of a fair competition and the harms of an unfair competition, provide examples, and make those examples relevant towards the tangible, feasible, and imminent harms and benefits of the current phenomenon in the status quo contained in the motion (if they seem to farfetched).

2. Because that act of limiting immigration is a form of denial to self-actualization.

We believe that everybody and every human being has a thing about this Maslow’s Theory, his “Hierarchy of Needs”. It is inherent in the human nature, and we have to respect it. We need to think of ourselves as a species; collectively, not individually. a certain one thing individual. Denying that is inhumane, as everybody should be free, should have that freedom of movement. Picture a prison, but just a little bit bigger (okay, sorry; A WHOLE LOT BIGGER prison). But the difference here is just that if in a prison you are confined to a 5×5 meters space, limiting your freedom of movement, in the world of your Team Negative side of the house, you would be confined to a realm of 150000×150000 kilometers or megameters or gigameters or terameters instead. Different scale, same aspect. Different reality, same philosophy.

Explore more on this argument about the harms of denying someone from self-actualization, the benefits of granting it, and then the importance and significance of area of movement in terms of a human’s self-satisfaction.

3. Because this motion will ensure that available resources be utilized optimally.

So, there is this phenomenon that if resources are available, and that there is no challenge in acquiring them, then there would be a diseconomy of scale. Picture a swimming competition with only 5 contestants. How can you be sure that the champion of that championship will be the best swimmer? At least, compared to a swimming championship pitting 500 different swimmers. The larger the scale of competition, the more we can be sure of the its quality, as well as the caliber of the winner(s). Same way goes to this real life, in our battle against resource scarcity. In a country where population is small (or, worse, MONOTONOUS, HOMOGENOUS, NOT DIVERSE – you know, the world which your Team Negative envisions) then you can be well dam sure that the winners will generally tend to be the stupid ones. But when you can ensure that there are lot of contenders and participants for this case, in the form of immigrants, that changes everything.

Team Negative

Team negative, rejoice and enjoy the taste of the salty tears from your Team Affirmative. The burdens of proof in this debate is skewed in favor of Team Negative. The weight is heavier over there in which they need to introduce an extra clause of exception which negates their whole premise of supporting free movement, and then explaining why that clause is justifiable to negate their precedence. This creates and opening, a chance for Team Negative to challenge their contradiction and the softness of their stance. But the thing about this burden that makes things even easier for Team Negative, is that we have a blanket stance, an inherently favorable position in establishing arguments. So, yeah, go ahead. Laugh your evilest laugh over their agony.

1. Because declaring its legitimacy has its merits and benefits for both recipient and sender countries.

For recipient countries, it means a clearer set of standard and procedure as well as leeway in treating their incoming immigrants. For sender countries, it means a guaranteed protection through an indirect, subtle assurance for the citizens in the recipient countries. Recipient countries are the western states, by the way, the ones that ‘receive’ immigrants and sender countries are the developing-world countries. So what this means for the recipient countries, is that now they don’t have to worry about international reception, 3^rd-party views, scrutiny, skepticism, objection, protests, whatever you call it, about their policy regarding immigrants. Remember that the way we expect this motion to be interpreted is as a UN/any UN subsidiary court rulings these actions as justified (legal) or otherwise. So, now, there you have it. But then again, why would a motion of this tone that sounds inhumane be passing a legal verdict? What the Team Negative wants?

Here comes the more difficult part for Team Negative. Arguing that your house also benefits sender countries (you could also argue that the interests of the sender countries are less than the importance of maintaining stability in the recipient countries, but we are trying to be politically correct here). How sender countries would benefit is via indirect subtle assurance. The thing is this: under the current status quo, the harms that afflict immigrants in western states arise from prejudice, hatred, and racism from the westerners’ native citizens. This hatred is not without cause. There is a very good idea behind it: they feel insecure when faced with a growing population which are of different aspects – culture, religion, sexual orientation, whatever – so what this motion does, for Team Negative, is curbing the growth of that number, directly addressing and answering the fears of the native citizens. As a result, they will have less need to fear the immigrants now.

2. Because there is just so much about limitation that we need to impose.

In regards to the immigration. And then overpopulation. Please note over here and bear in mind that you are adopting a stance of limiting inflow of human beings, not completely banning them. It is kind of soft of a stance, also (I think some Team Affirmatives are laughing at you right now), like your Team Affirmative.

But it is not without a good reason. So there is just this thing about limitation instead of banning. It is in regards to overpopulation. The thing about land occupancy, mass transit systems, educational and health facilities, is that they just have so much of a threshold to withstand incoming people. The idea behind a limit is to prevent the current population numbers to reach (or, worse, EXCEED) the choking point of that threshold. We do not want a country with overcrowded buses, trains, hospitals, and schools. How this is going to impact the living condition as a whole is no-brainer: the more the population, the higher the demand for residential areas, which would thus skyrocket apartment and flat rent prices. Overworked teachers and medical staffs aren’t too good for a country, too. It is in the interest of the governments to keep the number of human beings in their country 10-20% or a quartile beneath its choking point where all systems start to malfunction. Because, they also need to anticipate of a population growth caused by their own citizens procreating as well.

3. Because of that difference in static population and dynamic population.

Which is going to cause confusion in policy making. Static population will refer to the native citizens, who are ‘static’ – not moving, in which that they are unlikely to migrate. Dynamic population will refer to the immigrants – who are dynamic, moving. The thing is, policy making regarding population (birth control, subsidy towards certain healthcare sectors – go figure, vaccination and maternal stuffs) or others like that (traffic control systems) are based on data and figures that generally relies on static population, the de jure one, not the de facto. But the problem comes when the percentage of the dynamic population starts overlapping that of the static ones. It means that governments are now faced with a volatile factor in their exogenous variable, something which they can’t predict properly, or even if they can manage to do it, will achieve with immense difficulty, far more difficult than catering policies around the static population. Thus it is within the interests of the government to control this dynamic population growth, by limiting acceptance of immigrants.