2NC Impact Calculus
And, Indo-Pak war causes extinction.
Ghulam Nabi Fai, executive director of the Kashmiri American Council, July 8, 2001, The Washington Times, “The most dangerous place,” p. B4
The most dangerous place on the planet is Kashmir, a disputed territory convulsed and illegally occupied for more than 53 years and sandwiched between
nuclear-capable India and Pakistan. It has ignited two wars between the estranged South Asian rivals in 1948 and 1965, and a third could trigger
nuclear volleys and a nuclear winter threatening the entire globe. The U nited States would enjoy no sanctuary. This apocalyptic vision is no
idiosyncratic view. The director of central intelligence, the Defense Department, and world experts generally place Kashmir at the peak of their nuclear
worries. Both India and Pakistan are racing like thoroughbreds to bolster their nuclear arsenals and advanced delivery vehicles. Their defense budgets
are climbing despite widespread misery amongst their populations. Neither country has initialed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty, or indicated an inclination to ratify an impending Fissile Material/Cut-off Convention.
And, Central Asian conflict is the most probable scenario for nuclear war.
Stephen Blank, MacArthur Professor of Research at the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Fall 2000, World Affairs, Vol. 163, Iss. 2, “American
Grand Strategy and the Transcaspian Region,” p. InfoTrac OneFile
Thus many structural conditions for conventional war or protracted ethnic conflict where third parties intervene now exist in the
Transcaucasus and Central Asia. The outbreak of violence by disaffected Islamic elements, the drug trade, the Chechen wars, and the
unresolved ethnopolitical conflicts that dot the region, not to mention the undemocratic and unbalanced distribution of income across
corrupt governments, provide plenty of tinder for future fires. Many Third World conflicts generated by local structural factors also have great potential
for unintended escalation. Big powers often feel obliged to rescue their proxies and proteges. One or another big power may fail to grasp the
stakes for the other side since interests here are not as clear as in Europe. Hence commitments involving the use of nuclear weapons or
perhaps even conventional war to prevent defeat of a client are not well established or clear as in Europe. For instance, in 1993
Turkish noises about intervening on behalf of Azerbaijan induced Russian leaders to threaten a nuclear war in that case. Precisely
because Turkey is a NATO ally but probably could not prevail in a long war against Russia, or if it could, would conceivably trigger a
potential nuclear blow (not a small possibility given the erratic nature of Russia’s declared nuclear strategies), the danger of major war is higher here
than almost everywhere else in the CIS or the "arc of crisis" from the Balkans to China. As Richard Betts has observed, The greatest danger lies in areas
where (1) the potential for serious instability is high; (2) both superpowers perceive vital interests; (3) neither recognizes that the other’s perceived interest or
commitment is as great as its own; (4) both have the capability to inject conventional forces; and (5) neither has willing proxies capable of settling the situation.
2NC Impact Calculus
A. Turns case – Canada’s economy is key to the US economy.
Robert Pastor, June/July 2008. Professor at and Founding Director of the Center for North American Studies at American University. “The Future of North
America,” Foreign Affairs, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080701faessay87406/robert-a-pastor/the-future-of-north-america.html.
On January 20, 2009, if not before, a new national security adviser will tell the incoming president of the United States that he first two international visitors
should be the prime minister of Canada and the president of Mexico. Almost every new president since World War II has followed this
ritual, because no two countries in the world have a greater impact economically, socially, and politically on the United States than its neighbors. The
importance of Canada and Mexico may, however, come as a surprise to most Americans, as well as to the new president. In the presidential campaign, instead of
discussing a positive agenda for North America's future, the candidates have focused critically on two parts of that agenda, the 14-year-old North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) and immigration. And overall, one could conclude from listening to the campaign that Iraq is key to U.S. national security,
China is the United States' most important trading partner, and Saudi Arabia and Venezuela supply most of the United States' energy. None
of these propositions is true. For most of the past decade, Canada and Mexico have been the United States' most important trading partners and
largest sources of energy imports. U.S. national security depends more on cooperative neighbors and secure borders than it does on
defeating militias in Basra.
Canada will require steady increases in immigration to stabilize its economy
Citizenship and Immigration Canada, “Government of Canada will welcome more economic immigrants in 2010,” 6/26/2010,
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/releases/2010/2010-06-26.asp
Canada is adjusting its 2010 immigration plan to put even greater emphasis on economic recovery and further reduce the federal
skilled worker backlog, Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney told a news conference today.
“When I met with my provincial colleagues last week, they all stressed the importance of economic immigration ,” Minister Kenney said.
“As we recover from the recession, increasing economic immigration will help ensure employers have the workers they need to
supplement our domestic labour supply.”
Each year, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) sets out a plan for the number of immigrants it intends to welcome within economic, family and humanitarian
immigration categories. The planned range for 2010 is 240,000 – 265,000 immigrants. CIC generally achieves the midpoint of this range. In 2010, CIC anticipates
achieving the upper end of this range, allowing Canada to welcome more immigrants in the economic category than originally planned. This includes federal skilled
workers and record-level numbers of provincial nominees, without reducing the number in the family or humanitarian immigration categories.
Minister Kenney noted that some of his provincial colleagues expect the need will grow further in the years ahead. “This is something
we will need to take into consideration when we consult more broadly on plans for future years ,” he said.
US and Canada compete for skilled workers.
Surendra Gera and Thitima Songsakul, Industry Canada, “Benchmarking Canada's Performance in the Global Competition for Mobile Talent,” 2007, JSTOR
Second, the flow data concerning the mobility of the highly skilled comes mainly from countries' immigration departments. Based on
data availability, the flow analysis is limited to six countries--the US, the UK, Australia, Germany, France, and Canada-that are predominantly active in
competing for the globally mobile knowledge workers. The flow database is very limited, and the definition of skilled workers follows either the types of
visas issued or the occupation-base definition used in the immigration department in each country. Foreign workers are grouped into permanent or
temporary movers according to their visa types. Immigrants are considered permanent movers, while those entering with work permits
are deemed temporary movers.
Competition for skilled labor is zero-sum.
Surendra Gera and Thitima Songsakul, Industry Canada, “Benchmarking Canada's Performance in the Global Competition for Mobile Talent,” 2007, JSTOR
Competition for mobile human resources has a strong zero-sum aspect to it, at least as perceived by policy makers and enterprises
engaging in the strategic competition game (Harris 2004, 2006). National governments are competing through a number of policies
targeting globally mobile knowledge workers in order to increase the economy's comparative advantage in skill-intensive knowledge
industries. In the global competition game, immigration policies are at the forefront of government strategy in many developed
countries. In this section, we compare policies across the competitor countries on permanent immigration of the highly skilled, temporary migration of the highly
skilled, and on the immigration of foreign students at university levels. In light of the benchmarking results presented earlier, we attempt to identify the policy
differences that may account for the varied performances of comparator countries. It should be noted that there are other related policies that also play
an important role in attracting and retaining high-skilled workers. These include, for example, labour market regulations and practices
(such as credential assessment and recognition); science and technology policies aiming to spur research and innovation; trade and economic
integration policies; and fiscal incentives and taxation policies. However, these policies are not the focus of our discussion.
A. Canada’s growth is key to the global banking sector – modeling.
Rob Giles, Seattle Times, “Canada's economy envy of world,” 6/20/2010, http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2012168540_canecon21.html
Canada believes it can teach the world a thing or two about dodging financial meltdowns .
The 20 world leaders at an economic summit in Toronto next weekend will find themselves in a country that has avoided a banking crisis, and where the economy grew
at a 6.1 percent annual rate in the first three months of this year. The housing market is hot, and three-quarters of the 400,000 jobs lost in the recession have been
recovered.
World leaders have noticed: President Obama
says the United States should take note of Canada's banking system, and Britain's Treasury
chief is looking to emulate the Ottawa way on cutting deficits.
The land of a thousand stereotypes — from Mounties and hockey to language wars and lousy weather — is feeling entitled to do a bit of crowing as it hosts the G-20
summit of wealthy and developing nations.
"We should be proud of the performance of our financial system during the crisis ," Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said.
He recalled visiting China in 2007 and hearing suggestions "that the Canadian banks were perhaps boring and too risk-adverse. And when I was
there two weeks ago some of my same counterparts were saying to me, 'You have a very solid, stable banking system in Canada ,' and
emphasizing that. There wasn't anything about being sufficiently risk-oriented."
The banks are stable because, in part, they're more regulated. As the United States and Europe loosened financial regulations over the
past 15 years, Canada refused to do so. The banks also aren't as leveraged as their U.S. or European peers.
There was no mortgage meltdown or subprime crisis in Canada. Banks don't package mortgages and sell them to the private market, so they need to be sure their
borrowers can pay back the loans.
In Canada's concentrated banking system, five major banks dominate the market and regulators know top bank executives personally.
"Our banks were just better managed, and we had better regulation," said former Prime Minister Paul Martin, credited with killing off a massive government deficit in
the 1990s when he was finance minister, leading to 12 consecutive years of budget surpluses.
"I was absolutely amazed at senior bankers in the United States and Europe who didn't know the extent of the problem or they didn't know that people in some far-flung
division were doing these kinds of things," Martin said. "It's just beyond belief."
The Conservative Party government of Stephen Harper that took over from Martin's Liberals in 2006 broadly stuck to his predecessor's approach, although Harper cut
taxes and, when recession struck, pumped stimulus money into the economy, with the result that Canada again has a large deficit.
But the nation is recovering from the recession faster than others, and the International Monetary Fund expects Canada to be the only
one of the seven major industrialized democracies to return to a budget surplus by 2015 .
Canada this month became the first among those democracies to raise interest rates since the global financial crisis began .
George Osborne, Britain's Treasury chief, has vowed to follow Canada's example on deficit reduction. "They brought together the best brains both inside and outside
government to carry out a fundamental reassessment of the role of the state," he said in a speech.
It's a remarkable turnaround from 1993, when the Liberals took office amid a $30 billion deficit. Moody's downgraded Canada's credit rating twice. About 36 percent of
government revenue went toward servicing debt.
"Our situation was dire. Canada was in a lot of trouble at that point," Martin said. "If we were going to preserve our health care and our education system we had to do
it."
As finance minister, he slashed spending. A weak currency and a booming U.S. economy also helped balance the books. In the 1998 budget, the government estimated
about 55 percent of the deficit gains came from economic growth and 35 percent from spending cuts.
"The rest of the world certainly thinks we're the model to follow ," said Martin, who was prime minister from 2003 to 2006. "I've been asked by a
lot of countries as to how to go about it."
Don Drummond, Martin's budget chief at the time, says the United States and Europe won't have it that easy, because the economic climate was better in the late 1990s
than it is now, with large trade gains and falling interest rates.
"There's a lot to learn from Canada, but their starting conditions are worse ," Drummond said. "Even though we were on the precipice of a
crisis we weren't in as bad a shape as many of them are. "
B. Extinction
Norman Bailey, senior director of International Economic Affairs, “The World and I,” 1990, p. 33
The thirties after all began three months after the inception of the Great Depression and ended four months after
the start of World War II. This is not a coincidence. Tens of millions were killed and maimed in the Second World
War. If another historical credit liquidation cycle is allowed to take place in the usual chaotic fashion the chances of
another global armed conflict will be greatly increased-this time not only would hundreds of millions (rather than tens of millions) be
killed or wounded but the very hopes and the future of (hu)mankind, as such, might well be destroyed in the process.
Shortages Tiebreaker 2NC
Their ev is tech industry propaganda – the numbers all point to stable labor levels now.
Norman Matloff, prof. of computer science at UC Davis, “H-1Bs: Still Not the Best and the Brightest,” May 2008, http://www.cis.org/articles/2008/back508.html
The lobbyists for the tech industry and the American Immigration Lawyers Association know that crying educational doom-andgloom sells. Even though it was people born and educated in the United States who were primarily responsible for developing the computer industry, and even
though all major East Asian governments have lamented their educational systems' stifling of creativity, the lobbyists have convinced Congress that the
industry needs foreign workers from Asia in order to innovate.
The data show otherwise. Most foreign tech workers, particularly those from Asia, are in fact of only average talent. Moreover, they are
hired for low-level jobs of limited responsibility, not positions that generate innovation. This is true both overall and in the key tech
occupations, and most importantly, in the firms most stridently demanding that Congress admit more foreign workers.
Note again that the analyses presented here confirm and provide much sharper quantitative insight into previous work showing that the H-1Bs are of just average talent.
It has been shown for instance that foreign students in the U.S. tend to be concentrated in the less-selective universities, and that they receive
a lower percentage of research awards relative to their numbers in the student population. In the workforce, the foreign nationals in the
U.S. participate in teams applying for patents at the same percentage as do the U.S. citizens, and so on.
To be sure, the author is a strong supporter of facilitating the immigration of the world's best and brightest. He has acted on that belief, by championing the hiring of
extraordinarily talented researchers, mostly from India and China, into his department faculty. But as seen here, very few of the foreign workers are of that caliber.
Expansion of the guest worker programs - both H-1B visas and green cards - is unwarranted.
EXT – No Double Dip
Warren Buffet agrees – no double-dip recession.
Bloomberg, “Buffett Rules Out Double-Dip Recession Amid Growth,” 9/13/2010, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-13/buffett-rules-out-double-dip-u-srecession-says-berkshire-units-growing.html
Warren Buffett ruled out a second recession in the U.S. and said businesses owned by his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. are growing.
“I am a huge bull on this country,” Buffett, Berkshire’s chief executive officer, said today in remarks to the Montana Economic Development Summit. “We will not
have a double-dip recession at all. I see our businesses coming back almost across the board .”
Berkshire bought railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. for $27 billion in February in a deal that Buffett, 80, called a bet on the U.S. economy. The billionaire’s
outlook contrasts with the views of economists such as New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini and Harvard University Professor Martin Feldstein, who have
said the odds of another recession may be one in three or higher.
“I’ve seen sentiment turn sour in the last three months or so, generally in the media,” Buffett said. “I don’t see that in our businesses. I see
we’re employing more people than a month ago, two months ago .”
The world’s largest economy grew at a 1.6 percent annual pace in the second quarter, exceeding the median forecast of economists
surveyed by Bloomberg News, revised figures from the Commerce Department showed on Aug. 27. U.S. economic growth will slow to 2.5 percent next year from a
projected 2.7 percent this year as unemployment above 9 percent tempers consumer spending, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg
News this month.
‘Signs of Life’
Buffett built Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire into a $200 billion provider of insurance, energy and luxury goods and services over four decades. The company cut
about 20,000 jobs last year as demand for its products declined.
The economy is still recovering and isn’t likely to slip back into recession as “signs of life” appear in the U.S., Bank of America Corp. CEO
Brian Moynihan said today at an investor conference.
Buffett, who spoke via video connection to an assembly in Butte, Montana, said U.S. banks were ready to boost lending and encouraged
entrepreneurs to seek financing for their business ideas. Berkshire is the biggest shareholder of Wells Fargo & Co., the top U.S. home lender.
2. High risk aversion means no motivation.
Maerli (Science Program Fellow, Center for Int’l Security &Cooperation, Stanford Univ.) 2K [Morten Bremer, “Relearning the ABCs: Terrorists and
“Weapons of Mass Destruction,” The Nonproliferation Review, Summer, pp. 108-119// -delo]
Furthermore, a group’s interest in ABC weaponry is not the same as obtaining such capabilities. Before any decision to deploy either conventional
or non-conventional weapons, a terrorist group will have to judge its competence to use the weapon effectively. This will involve practical
assessments of the level of training, skills, and technical and logistical capabilities requires. Terrorists are dependent on success, as failure could
threaten the cohesiveness or the very existence of the group. This creates an environment of risk aversion where known and proven tactics will be
preferred. Surely, if the stakes are high, terrorists , as others, can accept further risks. But there have always been enormous gaps between the
potential of a weapon and the abilities and/or will to employ it by terrorists. Most terrorist groups, even those pursuing suicidal ends, protect their
resources. Wasting personnel and money will inevitably harm the group and its long-term goals. Consequently, new means and methods of
violence with unknown outcomes would be less appealing.
4. Their evidence relies on a misinformation campaign.
Adam Dolnik, Center for Nonproliferation Studies, ‘3 (Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 26.1)
Groups Motivated Predominantly by Islamist Ideology (al Qaida, PIJ). Groups in this category are even less discriminatory in
their suicide bombings than those of the preceding category. But despite the religious justifications that allow them to
dehumanize civilians more effectively, the CBRN involvement of thes e groups remains on the level of declared interest. And
even though many open-source reports and court testimonies document Al Qaida’s attempts to acquire CBRN agents, no hard
evidence of Al Qaida’s CBRN capabilities exists.91 Further, the fact that Al Qaida’s attempted acquisition of CBRN is public
knowledge suggests that not much effort was invested into concealing this information; quite the contrary. Under Lesson 9
subsection d) of the Al Qaida training manual, the group’s members are instructed exactly on what to say when captured and
interrogated. 92 It is quite possible that the existing claims of CBRN activities by the group’s members are part of a deliberate
misinformation campaign designed to spread fear and to divert the U.S. government’s attention from other forms of attack. In
terms of agent selection, it is interesting to note that these groups tend to claim possession of all types of CBRN weapons.
6- There will he no pandemic: humans will adapt
Malcolm Gladwell, The New Republic, July 17 and 24, 1995, excerpted in Epidemics: Opposing Viewpoints, 1999, p. 29
In Plagues and Peoples, which appeared in 1977. William MeNeill pointed out that…while man’s efforts to “remodel” his environment are sometimes a source of new disease. they are seldom
As humans and new microorganisms interact, they begin to accommodate each other. Human
populations slowly build up resistance to circulating infections. What were once virulent infections, such as syphilis become attenuated. Over time,
diseases of adults, such as measles and chicken pox, become limited to children, whose immune systems are still naïve.
a source of serious epidemic disease. Quite the opposite.