You can thank Israel Zangwill and 1782's Letters from an American Farmer for your next over-wrought immigration discussion

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32l3sTFRFX8&w=600&h=315]

I'm taking a class right now on international business and cross-cultural misunderstandings -- so stuff like Malcolm Gladwell's "ethnic theory of plane crashes" and Wal-Mart's failures in Germany -- and inevitably, every discussion comes back to the melting pot idea when someone tries to de…