Amelia Tan, Marcelo Mendes De Souza, Friday 11-12, 17/03/2011 Ramadan, LePen debate: Immigrants need to assimilate by adhering

to cultural and social norms and by learning the language before coming to a European country.
To a certain point, there is a need for immigrants to assimilate into their host countries cultural and social norms. One reason being that if we do not do that, there is the risk of alienation both from the immigrants and the citizens of that country. This alienation would be because of the misunderstandings that arise from not being able to understand each persons culture and their history. For example, to take Frances anti-burqa law, one reasoning that arises from the furore surrounding the law is that the immigrants might not have understood that France is a secular state. They do not allow religion to dictate their life and they certainly do not allow religion to dictate their politics. Thus, the main opposition from Muslim groups are that they (the politicians) do not respect their religion. However, the anti-burqa law was in fact a law that prohibits any conspicuous wearing of symbols related to any faith, and it could refer to the yarmulke, which is a jewish skullcap, or a huge cross hanging from a persons neck. With this argument, it could be viewed from a non-Muslims point of view that the Muslims in France are trying to get special recognition for their religion by turning a generic law against conspicuous symbols of religion into a law that targeted Muslims. On the other hand, one cannot possibly study another countries culture, social norms, and, potentially language before immigrating to another country because it is just not possible. Reading about a country and actually living in a country are two totally different things. While it is possible to read about a countrys cultural and social norms, there would be differences between the different parts of the country. And the information that one gets about the cultural and social norms about a country would be mainly generic. Also, with regards to studying a language, it is possible because there tends to be at least one language that is the one that everyone uses. But the question arises that what if the immigrant is a refugee, how can they study a European language when they themselves do not know that they will be fleeing their homeland. In addition, it is just not fair to ask of the immigrants to totally shrug of their mother culture and social norms when they immigrate into a new country. With those arguments in mind, I do feel that the statement above, while it does have grains of truth embedded in them, there is also a need to respect every immigrants cultural background and norms, while adhering to the countrys rule and regulation.

More recently, the large influx of Asian economic migrants to New Zealand in the late eighties and early nineties produced, among some groups of New Zealanders, a fear that the New Zealand way of life would become swamped by a new and non-New Zealand way of looking at the world. Did this happen?

Does the definition of a way of life mean that a civilizations way of looking at things are stagnated, meaning, the way that its ancestors looked at things a few centuries ago is the same way that the current population would look at things, or is a way of life fluid, changing as times changes. Does it matter what race the influx of immigrants was? Questions aside, it doesnt rea lly matter what race the influx was, although race could be a variable in the way a way of life changes. As long as there is immigration and as long as there is the influence of foreign societies such as the commercialism of the Americans, the food of the Europeans and such, the way of life would be fluid, constantly changing. With regards to the topic question, the answer would be yes and no. Yes, because with the large influx of Asian population migrants, came a population boost. With population boosts, comes more demand for products. More demand for products mean that peoples perspective of their way of life changes. And with any type of immigration, there is always the potential form gang and crime related activities, which in this case would be the Chinese triads. On the other hand, the influx of Asian migrants would, in theory not have really affected the New Zealand way of thinking because the children that the Asian migrants produce would become assimilated into the New Zealand culture, thereby, mitigating the problem of getting swamped by a new and non-New Zealand way of thinking. And also, the Asian migrants tend to stay in their own cliques and groups, which reduces the chances of New Zealand getting swamped by a new way of thinking