More Misleading Information from the Media:
The most diverse gathering of races and ethnicities from across the world is living in one place here in the United States. We often focus on the economic contributions of immigrants, but this tends to draw away from the tremendous social and cultural impacts that these communities have on American society. Immigrant communities bring time-tested traditional practices, customs, and knowledge from their countries that can inform and uplift American culture.
1. [Immigrants’] Eastern wisdom is deepening our understanding of spirituality. . . . 2. [Immigrants’] traditional cuisines are teaching us about proper diet in America. . . . 3. Immigrant farmers are showing us how to grow organic. . . . 4. Medical treatment from immigrants are supplementing our medical care. . . . Immigrant members of our society deserve reform that recognizes their importance to us all. – 4 ways Immigrant Cultural Wisdom Is Inspiring America, Huffington Politics, Rohit Kumar, 5/21/13
Fact Check: The endorsement of “reform” in the context seems to refer to the massive immigration increase bill before Congress three years ago. Thus this article gives the impression that large-scale immigration is necessary to reap the advantages to the gained from foreign cultures. That simply doesn’t follow.
To be sure, there are things we can learn from foreign cultures which can benefit us. But do we need huge numbers of people from those cultures to reap those benefits? Not at all. In an age of the Internet and other rapid means of global communication, we can easily access and apply new foreign ideas without having people bring them to us.
Certainly some immigrants might be helpful to act as teachers, but the problem with lots of them is that they might start teaching other things we don’t want to learn. Many Americans have benefitted from Yoga, a spiritual discipline from India. But the caste system and cow worship are spirituality we can do without. With immigration limited we can pick and choose the aspects of foreign cultures we want. With large-scale immigration assimilation breaks down, and we’re forced to take the bad with the good. Or to cite another example, if we don’t want pressure to adopt the “wisdom” of Sharia law, we would be wise to limit Muslim immigration.
As for knowledge about diet, there is plenty of information about foreign cuisines already available. As for farming we may indeed profit from foreign knowledge, but does that means we need to import millions of farmers to attain it? Also, we might keep in mind that with the Amish and conservative Mennonites we already have substantial communities of native-born Americans who are quite adept in organic agriculture. And as for medicine, we have indeed profited from acupuncture. Maybe it would help to admit some Chinese practitioners. But what would we gain from admitting a million Chinese who probably wouldn’t be experts in this healing art?
A common propaganda line of immigration advocates is that America is a country desperately in need of “cultural enrichment” brought by immigrants. Well, if we are really so deficient, then why do so many foreign people want to come here? It seems we are doing some things right, culturally speaking, and that being the case we should maintain our culture. That doesn’t mean we can’t look for ways to improve it, but the improvements should be what we decide we want.