Is a multicultural society desirable?
There are good and negative aspects for everyone and we all must decide for our selves

With worldwide immigration getting more and more active we all must try to get along with other people, however "different" they look or behave from us. Let's face it, foreigners are here to stay in our country (wherever you may live) so you need to think about it.

Anytime anybody says something against a particular ethnic group, he or she takes a chance of being called a racist. Is that logical or does it make sense? Of course not. Too many people have become too sensitive. I think one part of the reason is that “political correctness” funk.

Most people are creatures of habit and look at people that are different in a (at best) curious way, wondering how they are as people. We examine the way they look and if they are "different" from us
(this is why I choose the accompanying image, taken in Irian Jaya, or New Guinea to make the point of being different from most of us). We look at most that are different from us initially with "suspicion" and perhaps are slow in "warming up" to the stranger.

After traveling for 25 years to over 75 countries I have seen and often met the locals and usually traveling solo I had never had any problem meeting them or getting to know about them if I was so inclined.

Most societies have their own ways they live, behave, dress and think. There is no right or correct way, they are as they are and if you travel for sure you need to adapt to the country and people where you are.

What about at home, where you live, how do you feel about "foreigners" that are "different" from you?

There are many pros to live amongst foreigners, especially if they are from countries that are foreign to us. We can learn about their culture, food, way of thinking and how they see our (your) country from their perspective. There is no right or wrong way, there are as many different ways to live as there are countries, and we all should make an effort to at least try to understand their ways, even if we may not agree with them or even like them.

If our government saw fit to let them into our country, we have no choice to try to get along with them as we may and often will encounter them in every face of our daily lives.
We can enjoy their food, ethnic music, plays or films and often is having an interesting discussing with any foreigner most enlightening for us. Nobody says we always have to agree with whomever we are talking to but we should at least try to understand their point of view, whether we agree with it or not, we may learn a thing or two and perhaps find out why they think differently than we do on any given subject.

Many people base their view on what they see, read or hear from their own media, which often can be skewed and strongly biased, but when these people actually visit our country they actually may change their mind as they could find out that our country is quite different from they way their government portrays us.

As we have learned over the past few years certain countries have people with "special" skills that are in short supply at home. India for instance has many computer savvy people.

On the other hand, living amongst many immigrants and "foreigners" can often be exasperating as well. I am sure we all have placed a "service" call or called a companies service center when our computer broke down to just name one example. How aggravating is it when you have a difficult time understanding their English, which often is less than perfect and difficult to understand? When we call for answers we do not expect to talk to somebody who cannot understand us but as "outsourcing" is a fact of life in today's world economy we may as well get used to it.

Living in Southern California working in certain industries it is a given that we have to deal with many Spanish speaking employees or shop keepers that often do poorly in English, making communication difficult at times. Again this situation will stay with us and the better we can adapt and deal with it the better off we all are.

No one ever said life is easy and with all that new technology, people that speak many foreign languages we have a hard time understanding, things can get hectic and sometimes tempers can flair. Given the fact that this is the new world order, so to speak, we have to deal with it to survive, keep our sanity and to make our live less stressful.

It is difficult to understand to be looked at as a foreigner with much different features than the people in your host country unless you have experienced this yourself in a foreign country. I have on two occasions, one in the Black Township of Sowetto, near Johannesburg. I was the (I am German, living in the USA) guest of a Black family that took men to neighborhoods and a bar where normally no White man can go. I felt the stares of the people, not threatening but a bit uncomfortable.
The other time I visited Madagascar where I rented a bicycle traveling through the country side being the only white person around at a local market wanting to take pictures. I leaned against a wall, waited 5-10 minutes, let the locals stare at me until they lost interest and then I took my images and never felt ill at ease at any time after that.

A multicultural society can be difficult some times but on the other hand the many things these people bring with them often add so much to our culture that it hopefully eventually will outweigh the negative making this a better live for us all.