The Multicultural World

II – Reading Test
Name _______________________________________________ No. _______ Class _________ Date _________________

You are going to read an opinion article about the way Australia is dealing with migrants and their
integration.

Would my family pass an “Australian Values test1”?

As newly arrived immigrants in Sydney, my family got our start sharing the house of a Korean
minister in Campsie, a working-class suburb with a large Asian immigrant population. This was a fact
that I resented. I measured our successful integration as migrants by our proximity and resemblance
to the majority of Australians — and by this measure, we were failing.
5 Recent past events in Australian politics suggest that my younger self was not alone in his view.
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull invoked the need to balance diversity with “integration”
around “Australian values”.
In this ongoing promotion of Australian values, I thought about my family. My parents are well
positioned for the kind of integration that the Australian government seems to envision: they are
10 skilled professionals; they speak English. Like many migrants who have lived under authoritarian rule,
they believe in “the West”, its civilisation and its values. Despite this, my parents rely on a small,
insular, Korean-speaking immigrant community in nearly every aspect of their lives.
Those who are most concerned about ethnic segregation tend to conceive of minority
communities in almost entirely negative terms – as groups built around the rejection of the values,
15 lifestyles and networks of the majority culture. As a result, they overlook all of the good things that
ethnic communities provide. The benefits of belonging to migrant communities are, in a vast majority
of cases, unrelated to criminal intent or religious fervor. They arise from essentially human needs:
economic opportunity, knowledge networks and relief from the stresses of migrant life.
The proposal for an Australian values test, despite its best intentions, follows a pattern of
20 displacing responsibility for our society’s shortcomings onto migrants. To advance as a multicultural
society, we must focus not on the entitlements or responsibilities of migrants alone, but on the
collective task of building an inclusive society.
As Australians, we should turn our attention to the question facing us as a nation: Does our
multiculturalism, and the politics that surround it, live up to our values? We might then pass the
25 Australian values test — not some written exam, but the test that in the ordinary course of events
we face every day.
Bo Seo, in www.nytimes.com
(abridged and adapted; accessed in August 2019)
1.
At the time the article was written, the Australian government was considering
adding a “Values test” for immigrants seeking permanent residency in the country.

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 1. Match the words in column A with the word or expression they refer to in column B. Two of the
options do not apply.

Column A Column B
1. benefits
a. they (line 9) 2. migrants
b. They (line 17) 3. multiculturalism
c. its (line 19) 4. Values test
d. it (line 24) 5. author’s parents
6. proposal’s

2. Find synonyms in paragraphs three and four for the following words.

a. continuous _______________
b. imagine _______________
c. fail to see _______________
d. purpose _______________

3. Complete the following sentences with two to five words according to the text. Use your own
words as far as possible.

a. The author determined how well his family fit into Australian community according to
_________________________________________________ the mainstream culture.

b. The author thought his parents were well integrated in the Australian society since they were _____
__________________________________________________________.

c. The advantages of being part of migrant communities don’t result from _____________________
____________________________________.

d. A culturally-diverse nation can only develop when we understand that it’s our duty ______________
_______________________________________.

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