Welcoming Foreigners to America

ALBERT EINSTEIN CAME to America in 1933, for a visit, and ended up staying, and spending the last twenty two years of his life living in New Jersey. Once he got to America, he never left. Like the rest of us, he had mixed emotions and attitudes about Americans in general. On the one hand, he thought Americans were a little crazy, running around making a big fuss about him, and everything else. So energetic, so forward looking, these Americans. On the other hand, he absolutely loved Americans, because he loved their optimistic, cheerful, can do attitude. Everything is possible for Americans, said Einstein, because they believe it is, and he loved that about us. Our freedom to dream, and to make our dreams come true. Of course, Americans tended to love Einstein, and made him a big time celebrity as only Americans can, and Einstein simultaneously loved and feared this treatment. (wouldn't you?). He thought autograph seeking was insane, and he was right. Einstein was right about a lot of things, including socialism, religion, and the universe. He believed in all three, within reason. Foreigners in general who come to the United States to visit or to live tend to end up liking it, very much. They tend to come back again, or to stay here. Right now there are close to one million foreign students living in the U.S.A., and tens of thousands non student, tourist foreigners, visiting. I have never met a foreigner in America that I did not like. Every last one of them seems to be intelligent, nice, just a plain good person. Foreigners always seem humble, and friendly. Strangely, a recent online survey, on either AOL or MSN, seemed to indicate that a big majority of Americans would prefer that there were fewer foreigners in the United States. Strange, because that isn't the way Americans feel, it isn't they way they are. Americans are a generous, hospitable people. People come to America from other countries, they love the experience, and the American people, overwhelmingly, love having them. Sometimes surveys are misleading. The more foreigners in the U.S.A., the better for all concerned. Goethe said that the world would be better off if more of his fellow Germans lived in other countries.Cultural diffusion, cultural enhancement. The more foreigners who come to America, and the more Americans who travel or live abroad, the better of we all will be, in the long run.