A good opinion piece about how much immigrants from all countries add to our country. DP
By Editorial Staff
Our position: Difficulties aside, a more cosmopolitan community will be a richer one.
Call them the new Germans, the new Italians, the new Irish, the new migrants from the Deep South.
The world's ever-changing political and economic tides have carried another generation of diverse newcomers to the Indianapolis area, and with them an abundance of fresh energy, a banquet of cultural enrichment and no end of challenges.
To historians, it's a new chapter in an old story with the promise of a happy ending, albeit with a complicated plot.
As detailed by Francesca Jarosz and Will Higgins in The Star Sunday, the Crossroads of America is looking more and more like a crossroads of continents, with the foreign-born population having increased by 69 percent since 2000 in the 15-county area.
Those approximately 100,000 people hail mostly from Latin America; but Asia and Africa are substantially represented as well.
The added colors in the Indy mosaic are as obvious as construction workers and grocery stores of Mexican origin, and as subtle as suburban dwellers from China doing research at Eli Lilly and Co. They are reflected in the dozens of languages spoken by school pupils. They present themselves in Indian supermarkets, in Sikh and Hindu temples and in Christian churches worshipping in a variety of non-English tongues -- as they did during waves of immigration decades ago.
Civic leaders, from the mayor's office to immigrant communities themselves, have worked hard in recent years to spread the welcome mat, ease integration and allay fears. Still, the process is often arduous, even traumatic, both for those bringing change to the city and for those who must accommodate it.
Be sure to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.
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