As this writer at Ricochet notes, immigration and related issues have taken up a lot of attention during the slogging presidential campaign season. Something often overlooked in the fuss is that the reason there is an immigration issue is that people want to come here. Nobody's digging tunnels to get into North Korea.
So he's reprinted several of the comments on a Reddit question, "What was the most pleasant surprise about America?" asked of immigrants. No place is Eden, but at least as far as the people quoted at the link are concerned, here is a whole lot better than there was.
Flawed, but still fabulous.
On the other hand, we have these lovely folks, who live overseas so that they can, among other things, not pay back their student loans. Although we as a nation are currently out the money they owe us, unloading a guy who let his parents co-sign on $146,000 for film school and then skipped while getting two teachers in Austin who've paid 60 percent of their house mortgage off in two years sounds like a win for the good guys.
Years ago, I remember talking to someone who had hosted a man who emigrated (escaped?) from an Eastern Bloc country. The first time he took the man to an American grocery, the man broke down crying: he thought the stories of easy availability of, and choice of, food in America was a myth, but he saw it was not.
ReplyDeleteI have also had international students comment on how friendly Americans are and how willing we are to go out of our way to help someone.