You and your friends Janet and Michael have just been offered a big summer internship working for a large multinational company based in New York City. Congrats!
However, your internships are an international assignment, having you work at one of their large offices in the Middle East. While working in a foreign country is intimidating, the pay is incredibly lucrative, paying you twice as much as what you’d get for doing the same work in the United States. In addition, the company will pay for all your housing, travel, and other relocation costs.
The company did say that you could instead do an internship at their offices in New York City. The pay would be one half of what you’d make from the international internship. Furthermore, your costs of housing, travel, and relocation to New York City would only be partially covered.
Initially, Janet, Michael, and you are all excited about the prospect of the Middle East internship. However, today Michael has brought some news to you and Janet.
“I was just talking to Jason,” says Michael. “He did this internship last summer, and I found out some disturbing things.” Michael goes on to explain that while the foreign country’s government may be fairly described as a benevolent dictatorship that takes very good financial care of its citizens and the workers from the United States and Europe, there is also state-sanctioned and culturally-approved discrimination against women, LGBTQIA+, and the low-income foreign workers from Southeast Asia.
Michael concludes by saying, “I’ve already asked the company to switch me to the internship in New York City. I can’t voluntarily work in a country that allows that kind of discrimination. I was hoping that you two would join me in New York City this summer.”
“No way,” responds Janet flatly. “I also spoke to Jason, and he was clear that any discrimination only happens to people who are not American or not European. So I will personally have nothing to worry about.”
Michael starts to get heated yelling, “Are you kidding me!? You are willing to sell your soul to some vile country for some extra money?”
“Sell my soul?!” Janet roars, “It is their country, their rules. They get to decide what’s right for them. Who are you to judge them? So decline the job, that’s on you. Don’t force your morals on me, or anyone else for that matter.”
Question: Should you accept the international internship in the Middle East?
Explain and justify your answer to this question by doing the following three tasks:
Construct a four-sentence paper.
Sentence one should simply state the position, of either Janet or Michael (pick one), that you are arguing against.
Sentence two should then state your position on this issue along with your reason(s) justifying it. That is, this summarizes your answer to the question.
Sentence three presents a criticism that either Janet or Michael (whoever you are arguing against) might give to reject your position.
Finally, sentence four summarizes your response to that criticism.
Make sure that each sentence is (a) correctly numbered and (b) actually a sentence.
Turn sentence two of your four-sentence paper into a full paragraph (or paragraphs if needed), where you fully explain and justify your answer to the question.
Turn sentence four of your four-sentence paper into a full paragraph (or paragraphs if needed), where you fully justify why the criticism of your position from sentence three is mistaken.
Please use APA in-text citations, along with a reference section at the end of your answer, for any sources that you draw upon in responding to this problem. This includes the required course texts.