PoliticalAtheist

there was no sarcasm and lack of respect at all... I made no ad hominems... where are you getting this? the tone that I received though... rejection, appeals to probaility, ZERO citations, conjunction fallacy, argument from silence, burden of proof shifting...

what about the canadian survey? seriously? lol unreal

really? having people utterly unlike yourslelf, with language barriers, fundamental religious differences, different mores and behavioural differences makes for better group cohesion? I'd be grateful if you could produce the evidence for such a claim... eveyr second study these days seems to be pointing to the exact opposite. http://books.google.ca/books?id=S_4gAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA217&lpg=PA217&dq=multiculturalism+failed+mistrust&source=bl&ots=IuKLiw8qyN&sig=t-qohe_8QALKfXUiIJH_ZYQ42xE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oB_AU5LaI5GiyASckYKgAw&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=multiculturalism%20failed%20mistrust&f=false http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/afshin-shahi/failure-of-british-multiculturalism-and-virtue-of-reciprocity http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/17/angela-merkel-german-multiculturalism-failed then there was our own survey: http://www23.statcan.gc.ca/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=4508 that determined that immigrants from the 90's prefer their own culture, that 78% do not wan to assimilate or participate in canadian life (other than in an economic pursuit), that 88% are happy to associate as much as possible primarily with members of their own ethnicity etc...

no so far we have a rejection out of hand of the fraser report... I've seen no refutation whatsoever... discussion on sharia law (considering it is bad enough no?) dyou think that contemplating in one way or another the introduction of sharia type law is good and a benefit of our policy of multiculturalism? -tourists ALSO bring diseases ( again... are you listing this as an argument of strength for diversity?) -did I say being bilingual is bad? different languages aren't bad... but when its to the point where english literacy recedes and that it gives way to language barriers... (wait a minute are you saying language barriers are good?) - vague economic arguemnts?! http://www.fraserinstitute.org/uploadedFiles/fraser-ca/Content/research-news/research/publications/immigration-and-the-canadian-welfare-state-2011.pdf uses federal economic statistics... and census data ... its pretty unambiguous that the report draws from simple statements of fact... just saying its bogus.... doesn't make that an argument... -immigrants less educated than canadians... well read you own source: "Their employment and unemployment rates and their earnings are, in general, substantially lower from those of native-born Canadians"... "The difficulties faced by immigrants have been attributed to several factors. One is the low rate of recognition of their credentials (Ferrer and Riddell 2004, and Green and Worswick 2004), which is partly reflected in the large proportion with university degrees in jobs with low educational requirements, such as retail sales clerks, truck drivers, office clerks, cashiers and taxi drivers. In 2006, 28% of recent immigrant men and 40% of women held this kind of employment (Chart A) compared with 10% and 12% of native-born Canadians." so yes they come here with bogus medical degrees from egypt... and end up driving taxis... and btw... NONSENSE: immgrants CANNOT be linked to lower crime rates... because canada does not keep any racial crime stats.... so anybody saying so is selling snake oil. Especially when we consider the clues we get from our MSM: in 2006 when there was an epidemic of gun violence... 47 out of the 68 gun murders were committed by one ethnic group alone: Jamaicans. I suspect rates aren,t much different elsewhere... but without ethnic or race based stats... we have victimization census data as the only reliable source of info... but yeah: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto-murders-drop-after-jamaica-based-gang-crackdown-1.1132109 http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2014/06/30/gta_police_arrest_jamaican_man_sought_in_41_murders.html http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/24/graphic-where-are-torontos-murders-happening/ Crime is linked with education... ok... why do we import populations from again: Haiti, Jamaica, south america, sub saharan africa etc with very low levels of education then? Aren't we by the same token importing crime by your logic? anyways... again you listed nothing to support the notion that MULTICULTURALISM IS A SOURCE OF STRENGTH AND BENEFITS CANADA.

that's pretty unreasonable... I came here to ask for concrete, specific, measurable advantages brought upon by our policy of multiculturalism... I am on the fence at the moment as I come from the position that multioculturalism is a strength... I'm just looking for arguments, because in debates with people who take the opposing views... I invariably fail to produce anything substantive... (again, above ethnic cuisine). instead of listing some examples, you went ahead and simply rejected every argument I had heard and reproduced here, while offering none to substantiate the position that multiculturalism is a great strength... posts of low quality? you keep asking for sources for my pretty common knowledge statements... our crop of imimgrants create language issues and lower literacy rates (how is this even controversial?) who would ask for sources on this?... or: "immigrants bring exotic diseases" (again that's not like claiming that the earth is flat)... these aren't astonishing or extreme claims... I didn't move any goalposts... I'm merely ecchoing the pretty hard to dispute arguments as I have heard... but again... why can't people on the side of multiculturalism , calmly and soberly point out to some facts supporting the notion that multiculturalism is a great source of strength for us... instead of (like you guys did) asking ME to list some reasons why it isn't... the work is already done on the subject and there way worse stuff out there... I'm asking for positive statements to support multiculturalism... you can't asnwer my question with "we should all be equal"... that's not a specific example of strength... and we should'nt (like you did) point to areas of tension, conflict and inequality (because that also isn't a good argument for multiculturalism... on the contrary: you're playing in the hands of the people who say multiculturalism in canada is an ORDEAL... you're literally showing why it doesn't work! anyways... I already sense a good deal of resentment and emotional outrage on your part... called me a liar, that sets up strawmen arguments and that is "anti" this and that and the other thing... if you can't point out to concrete worthwhile arguments of benefits we would not have were it not for multiculturalism... than that says it all doesn't it?

ok so everything I said is a complete lie... there never were sharia courts debated... sure... while it's true that Jews retained minor communal law rights IN ONTARIO, similar sharia proposals were made in Quebec, where there is no faith based arbitration. So the claim that its about "equal rights" is bogus. Either way, we have to recognise that the debacle is actually an argument against multiculturalism, and another example of the conflict it creates... why should there be any special treatment of ANY minority if the goal is EQUALITY... how did the jews and chirstians get priviledges in the first place? doubtlessly through similar tension and noise... and here's another example of the multiplicity of problems that come with multiculturalism: if we give one ethnicity a priviledge... we have to grant them to ALL (almost indiscriminantly mind you) or there's rioting and anger... some strength and advantage... And immigrants don't bring exotic diseases ? http://www.cmaj.ca/content/169/10/1035.full We fund special screening programs for immigrants from certain regions of the world: http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/38/12/1742.full "In most immigrant source regions, infectious diseases continue to represent major causes of death and morbidity due to respiratory infections, gastrointestinal and diarrheal diseases [12], tuberculosis [13], and HIV infection/AIDS [14]. The risks of infectious disease acquisition in those source nations are manifest in certain immigrant and migrant populations after they move to their new destination. As migration continues in an increasingly globalized world, health care providers at the primary care and specialist level can expect to be faced with the challenges of recognition, diagnosis, and management of diseases that are themselves the consequences of international factors." immigrants the US's CDC covers the phenomenon pretty clearly: http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/2008/02/t20080227c.html and they know that there is a risk for contagion brought about from immigration chiefly from sub saharan africa and Mexico in particular. As for Universities dropping in value... I thought this was common knowledge... University degrees in Canada are increasingly worthless... 1 in 4 graduates work in jobs where they are overqualified, 2 out of 4 don't even work in their area of study... and the rest are engineers, scientists, doctors who still retain value from their degrees http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/why-are-so-many-of-canada-s-young-people-out-of-work-1.1370260 but: http://business.financialpost.com/2013/08/26/the-value-of-education-is-dropping-fast-for-university-graduates/ about every university has its bevy of ESL courses, some of them even offer degrees in ESL: http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/info/regist/calendars/programs/1144.html surely you knew this right? I mean were you taking the position that english was strengthened by the influx of people from countries with different languages? that's a little self evident. and again... there have been countless reports that migrant workers and other low skill immigrants have double negative impact: A/ they displace jobs for current citizens and B/ consume much more in services than they contribute in taxes. http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/05/17/immigrants-cost-23b-a-year-fraser-institute-report/ I agree that high expertise immigrants offer much more value... but again, our immigration policy doesn't work like that... we don't import high skill immigrants only... we import to increase diversity and strengthen multiculturalism which our government tells us is our strength (some even go so far as to say its our greatest strength) yet still... it stands to reason doesn't it? WHAT ARE THE CONCRETE SPECIFIC STRENGTHS PROVIDED BY MULTICULTURALISM AND OR/DIVERSITY? again... we all we have pointed to so far is : ethnic food... just sayin' ...

Well... cooking is basic chemistry... it would be the height of absurdity to claim that only certian ethnicities and races are capable of assembling certain dishes. Also if we were to design an immigration policy with that in mind (which again: absurd) wouldn't we simply be importing chefs and restaurateurs directly? why import whole swathes of people? Its like using a nuclear bomb to cut your lawn... Well there are many social issues that come with immigration, certain efforts in Toronto were made by muslim groups to bring sharia courts for instance ... there are language problems which have resulted in a great drop in literacy and have actually dumbed universities down... we went from teaching latin and german in little school in the 30's and 40's... to teaching remedial english in our universities... there are constant tensions, where minorities form groups to champion their interest often at the detriment of others (a sort of power struggle that is exacerbated by mutual distrust and disdain between groups)... our very identity is severely compromised now... i mean just ask yourself what it really means to be canadian anymore... everyone knows it simply means to live in canada... so there's severe damage to our social fabric... certain immigrants bring exotic diseases with them... schistosomiasis, Chagas disease, and even certain drug resistant strains of tuberculosis... there's also the fact that it cheapens labor, and as a result brings down median life quality for all canadians... above all there is the fact that, per force, by importing the third world we are becoming little by little.. more like the third world... corruption is at an alltime high, our infrastructure is crumbling... so again, what are the great specific strengths that we receive for such a policy? I stop at restaurants... and even there...

Corporations are groups of people who act as a legal person... a bulldozer is an inanimate object... When you tax a corporation: who pays? the building, the xerox machines? the office? No... the shareholders and the people representing the company do... Bulldozers are not people... they are like the xerox machine or the office building of the corporation... .

so far I've posed my question... and not a single person attempted to answer it directly... this is the problem I'm having when I talk about this... surely someone has SOMETHING beyond different ethnic restaurants... right?

well no... any corporation wanting to go anywhere must seek the approval of the country... some countries ban GMO crops... consequently Monsanto can't grow food there... I don't understand your point here...

no you can't put a corporation in jail... you can only put the people operating it in jail... likewise when a corporation pays taxes... who pays it? the walls of the building of the coporation? no, they come directly from the leadership operating the corporation... Corporations are people and you validated that fact with your own example.

Incidentally... Corporations are people, I assure you none of them are owned by aliens or cyborgs...

To the best of my knowledge, that's not AT ALL the way our immigration system is designed... and it's not the way our government sells it to us. The official position: is that we benefit from multiculturalism- that without people from other cultures (not skills), canada would be weak and our economy presumably compromised... We take on immigrants with oftentimes no language skills... nevermind education- we take in people from Haiti, Jamaica, Somalia, etc... the overwhelming majority of which have no skills at all. Why? Surely there must be a reason, and I would hope that it's because these people add to our multiculturalism: but again: specifically, exactly WHAT is it in this multiculturalism that contributes to our commonwealth?

Again... this isn't really concrete or specific, it's more a sort of weak theoretical skeleton... Also... If we accept that all cultures are equal... then in what way does having people from OTHER cultures benefit us? What does it matter if the difference between a native canadian and a haitian say are ZERO. Why make it a point to bring Haitians in then? How did we come to the conclusion that a monoculture is INFERIOR or less desirable to a multiculture? Furthermore: that speaks nothing to specific contributions of multiculturalism: does it increase group cohesion, does it increase corn yields, does it make business run smoother... I'm looking for real examples that can be listed in support of our multicultural policy... I mean surely there must be some?

That's not a ringing endorsement for multiculturalism is it?... If the only thing you can point to is that multiculturalism brings about a situation where everyone walks on metaphorical egg shells because of the hightened risk for disunity and tensions it brings... I fail to see how that would constitute a "strength"... nevermind a source of "unity"