A few weeks ago Global Culture blog featured a post about people who are open to new experiences. One of the points of the post was that cities of the USA which have been more open to receiving immigrants are now hubs for creativity and innovation.
In other words, immigrants can have a positive effect on a community because they bring new skills, an open mind and create global connections.
One early and important example of this phenomenon was the town of Huntsville in Alabama. Home to a space programme led by German scientists after World War II, the town supplied the brains behind the launch of the first American satellite in 1958 and put astronauts on the moon in 1969.
So what was the effect of opening up to immigration on this one-time cotton market town? It is now a thriving city of 170,000 people and has one of the highest concentrations of scientists and engineers in the USA.
