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I suspect it has to do also (in the basic idea of the article) to knowing a different way of doing things.

Those who are born in one place and keep doing the same things won't know about ways of doing it differently

The article seems that it's trying a bit too hard though.

I think that the gist of the article is that you can be more creative (i.e. come up with ideas that hardly anyone thought of before), if you have more distance from culture. In other words, people that are deeply entrenched in culture, can only think of doing things in the way that the culture is doing it now.

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.

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