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Foreign travel

by gmatroundabout » Tue Jun 22, 2010 9:39 am
Politician: Increasingly, citizens attempting to travel internationally are turned away at borders, due to what are deemed suspicious travel documents. Some observers suggest that if any citizens of our country are denied entry at a border, we should retaliate by refusing to allow entrance at our borders to nationals of the denying country. However, if every country instituted this policy, soon international travel would be a thing of the past.

Which of the following assumptions is necessary to the politician's argument?

A. There are no countries that currently retaliate against other countries that deny travelers entrance at their borders.
B. Retaliation against other countries with stringent border checks is never justified.
C. The border crossing difficulties of individual civilians are not appropriate subject matter for political action.
D. Every country will eventually deny entrance to at least one citizen of every other country.
E. Terrorism has increased the stringency of border-crossing regulations.

Please support your answers with clear reasoning.
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by sk818020 » Tue Jun 22, 2010 10:08 am
The answer is D.

This is a causal argument. The argument states that because something may possibly be the case, then it will be the case. For this to be true the author is assuming that, in fact, the cause will happen. For this particular argument, the author concludes that eventually every country will stop allowing people from every other country into the host country. The only way this could happen is if in fact every country stopped at least one person from every other country. By making this assumption clear, you prove that the cause will in fact happen leading to the effect.

I hope this was clear enough. Could you please confirm the OA?

Thanks,

Jared
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by GMATGuruNY » Tue Jun 22, 2010 12:54 pm
What's the conclusion of the argument?

ALL international travel will stop if the discussed policy is implemented. (Pretty extreme.)

Why?

The policy states that if even one citizen from country X is denied entry into country Y, country X should deny entry to every citizen of country Y. (Again pretty extreme.)

What's the assumption?

For ALL travel to stop -- an extreme conclusion -- every country would have to start denying entry to the citizens of every other country.

So the correct answer is D. It provides the missing link described above.
Last edited by GMATGuruNY on Tue Jun 22, 2010 4:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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by gmatroundabout » Tue Jun 22, 2010 4:08 pm
Thanks, Mitch and Jared. The OA is indeed D. Explanations were very useful.
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