Among numerous successful examples of immigration pouring into Canada and the United States, legally or not, causing alarm about jobs and strange customs, sometimes there is very good news. Chinese are pouring into Canada and America, and are fitting in very well.

Compared to violent people who hate us, the Chinese are diamonds: they want to fit in and make a good lives for themselves and their families. They do think like us.

A recent study of Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, between Seattle and Vancouver, a city of 173,600 people, reports it has absorbed so many immigrants it is now 57.4 percent foreign born, yet retains a low violent crime rate and surprisingly little inter racial violence.

Richmond, like Canada, learns and admires the names of Jefferson and Lincoln as much as our own. Anglo American Chinese are arriving, and it is good and many of them arrive with their own diamonds.

Pearl Harbor, the War, and the panic after 1941 caused the forced evacuation of Japanese from west coast America and Canada, who rarely returned to the coast after the War. Slowly there has been a trickle, then a flood of people from Hong Kong, then mainland Chinese. These waves were followed by smaller waves of peoples from Taiwan, India, Indonesia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

After early skirmishes, disputes; feelings on all sides of lack of respect, it was soon apparent that after each new wave of people from one area, all had to readjust in their living, working, school routines to keep tempers even.

Respect, or the lack of it, is so often the deepest feeling that people can sense in a new situation, and ways were to make themselves clear, moment by opportunity. Canada has revised immigration laws now, that make skills, education or ability to create employment by bringing new capital with you a priority over family repatriation.

Now, we locals know each new Canadian is as likely to be your new emergency room doctor, or your new pharmacist, and the average new American or Canadian can be better educated than the average locally born North American; immigrant children in Canada tend to lead the honor roles at school and university. This could be nurtured anywhere.

This makes for a better North American as well as America and Canada, and us English speaking whites who were the population when we were young, now a bit taken aback, still nod our head in approval. That new Dr. Wong was very easy to talk to, explained it all clearly. I live 50 miles from Richmond and 70 miles from Seattle.

My grand children confirm what I read. The new children are assigned an older grade “buddy” who meets them at recess, before and after school; helps them meet and mingle at school. My grandchildren and their classmates are encouraged to welcome newcomers and inquire about their habits.

There might be a national special day, say the birth of Buddha or Confucious or The Prophet or even Jesus, and a discussion encouraged by the teacher to have the child from that country say why that is important and what we can all learn from that.

And the point of respect for each religion also reminds the children how they all really say the same point about living the Golden Rule. Treat one another as you would have them treat you; live as saintly a life as you can, and you will be rewarded in the next life or heaven or reincarnation.

Be loving and fair minded to all. On food days, each new child gets to show the others in the cooking class how they make a particular rice cake, or something from their native land. If there is something exciting to get them all giggling, such as Mongolian rattlesnake, even the child from there giggles that pizza sounds better.

So while grandma stays at home, speaking the old language, when she goes into town with a grandchild she is publicly reminded to “Speak English, grandma. We live in Canada”. That is also America, Australia; it must become Germany, France, Italy, Japan, or they begin to sink under the financial weight of too few young to support too many retired, within decades. And yet in France and Germany, huge benefits are pouring out to retiring citizens the nation can not really afford.

Back in sanity and reality, it touches my heart when I take my grandchildren to the skating rink, and we see well bundled dark and golden young faces in various stages of learning to ice skate. Even more amazing is to see their brothers, in the next rink over, in full hockey gear, listening to a coach. And you know in those homes, some Asian Canadian fathers are getting up at five in the morning to get their Canadian sons to hockey rink time.

At those moments, I imagine an Asian Canadian dad realizing that there is no going back now: an ocean now separates the heart of his mother from his children. And at Christmas time, out for a family drive with my own children and grandchildren and we see a family, or an Asian Canadian father in his yard putting up Christmas decorations; I roll our side windows down, slow down, honk, we all give thumbs up, and shout Merry Christmas. You should too, if you do not now.

We always get a huge smile and a shout and wave back a new friend. Then, the car horn behind honks, and we wave our last wave, and we are gone into the glowing last lights of Christmas. But in my rear view mirror, dad is still waving, and the moment lives on in the heart of our new friend and us. We may all need to learn to become neighborhoods of color and increasing diversity. Not that we have much choice.

Global Panda has awoken, and is either working hard at home selling us goods, diamonds for coal or the other way around, we shall see. And many Chinese still want to move here and be more free. This vitality is lifting North America above Europe, who do not welcome, fear, and isolate their new arrivals, leading to mistrust and violent reactions to their enforced poverty. More on this in following articles.We are the diamond in the rough the world is coming to polish.

By: Derek Dashwood