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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg
Yeah except the very standards by which westerners morally judge themselves (or rather position their personal quest for cultural capital as a moral crusade) with respect to immigrants is non-existent in the big cities throughout Asia. We see plenty of people on forums like this brag about which western city has the largest and most eclectic minority population (and certain minorities carry greater cultural cache than others) while inferring that they, themselves, possess a higher cultural status because they, themselves, successfully mingle with said minorities.
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It's important to distinguish between the moral aspects of diversity and the other reasons for valuing it. The moral standpoint comes down to having pre-existing diversity in the form of indigenous people, formerly enslaved people, and people from colonial territories such as Puerto Rico. Such people who are already here deserve to be treated with respect and fully included in contemporary society, so cities that attract such people and allow them to thrive without externally coerced segregation show a type of moral virtue. That's because of the long history of things like apartheid, Jim Crow, and even the Holocaust etc. which are examples of intolerance toward local minority groups (well, minority in terms of money and power rather than population in the case of S. Africa).
But valuing diversity in terms of immigration is a mostly separate thing. It has little or nothing to do with moral virtue and is mostly part of globalization. Having access to wide varieties of cultures and ideas is interesting and exciting for many. In fact, having variety such as being able to eat food, buy products, or hear languages from anywhere in the world is a type of wealth, and having people from around the world helps to facilitate that. And given the low birth rates in much of the West, immigration is often seen as a way to help prevent demographic and economic stagnation. But these are valuable for instrumental rather than moral reasons.
The main exception is obviously refugees since there's a strong moral component there. But while many immigrants in Europe are refugees, it's a pretty minimal percentage in North America.