The Secret of Immigrant Genius

That's not precisely true. Zurich speaks German, true, but it's Schweizerdeutsch --- it's a quite different dialect to the Hochdeutsch they speak in Germany. I live in Zurich; a German-born work colleague is actually taking formal lessons in it so he can understand what the locals say. It's that different.

Everyone here speaks Hochdeutsch too, or at least does now, so Einstein would probably have gotten along fine, but he most likely wouldn't be feeling like he was at home.

Vienna had its own tarock type that did not survive WW1: http://i-p-c-s.org/pattern/ps-14.html

Lederhosen were once popular all over the Alpine Region, so I'm sure that they were popular in Vienna, too.

The WSJ is a great publication and worth reading.

But you have to understand whose interests the WSJ represents: the global business elite. The global business elite loves immigration because, to them, it represents an inflow of cheaper workers who know and/or care less about their rights. (Even if you don't hire immigrants directly, increasing the labor supply helps slow wage growth.) There are probably also some other factors, like status signaling. They aren't worried about getting cultural details right, because they don't care about culture or civic engagement or anything like that. They care about cheap labor.

You can therefore expect the majority of WSJ articles about immigration to say whatever they think cheerleads immigration most, no matter how nonsensical it is (but since the WSJ is a "serious" publication, you'd think nonsense would be kept to a minimum.)

(There are, of course, many supporters of immigration who have nothing to do with the global business elite, many other arguments than can be made, for and against, but that's the WSJ demographic.)

Not to go off topic too much, but it should be noted that in South Africa there is also an extremely authoritarian form of affirmative action or black economic empowerment, etc. which effectively means you _have_ to employ people based on their skin colour when your business reaches a certain size or effectively you can't do business in the economy. It's a form of justified-racism directed at a minority group (< 10% of the population is white) that stifles the labour market and makes things like SpaceX impossible.

The "brain-drain" you speak of is skilled white workers who are leaving the country because they can't get work or can't advance in their careers, etc. A completely stupid problem created by the government's own ineptitude.

Probably was true 100 years ago, but not anymore, when at least in my country, all you need is a valid passport and a cheap ~30 Eur one-way plane ticket. Millions of Eastern Europeans did just that after their countries joined EU.

I've lived in four different countries for periods of 12 months or longer (including the country of my birth), on three different continents. I don't think it took or takes specific courage to make such moves, more like an innate sense of inquisitiveness and lust for adventure. I wanted to experience different people, cultures and norms.

In someone much smarter than myself, this may help to encourage their genius. In my case, I mostly just had a good time, but also I believe became a much more tolerant person.

Alan Kay tries to express this concept in his talk "Normal considered harmful", it may give a different perspective on the same concept.

I think it's very good to point this out in relation to immigration right now. However, it's just one of the reasons we should be open to immigration: humanness (brotherhood); a better outcome for both parties ("immigrants" and "natives") in the long run if we give immigrants a possibility to start a "normal" life as fast as possible; we can share the workload and may alleviate the problem of ageing western societies; etc.