This argument is so asinine and so utterly silly that it feels like parody, or like a straw-man invented by anti-leftists (ie. something that some anti-leftists claim that pro-immigration leftists are saying even though they aren't).
However, it's a real argument. And not just by some random anonymous twitter users, but actual elected politicians in the UK and some other countries.
And the argument is: Without immigrants we wouldn't have exotic foods, like curry or falafel.
And yes, those politicians are presenting that argument in all seriousness. It's not like they are lightening the mood with a joke, or doing a bit of self-parody or something like that. They are presenting it 100% seriously.
It shouldn't even be necessary to explain why that's a completely asinine argument, but here we go anyway:
Firstly, you don't need to import any immigrants in order to be able to eat foreign cuisine. This should be so utterly obvious that it shouldn't need to be even stated, but apparently it has to.
Different cultures can share recipes and ingredients among each other. In fact, humanity has been doing exactly that for literally thousands of years without any problems.
Secondly, even if for some unfathomable reason we absolutely needed a local in order to prepare us that cuisine (I have no idea why we would, but let's assume that for some strange reason we do), you don't need to import millions of immigrants in order to have some guest chefs work in western countries under a work visa.
If anything, this point makes the entire argument even more incomprehensible and asinine. Seriously, why would we need to import millions of immigrants just to have, I don't know, maybe a couple of hundreds of cuisine experts from those countries visit and work here? Why do we need a hundred thousand non-experts for every expert that we import? It makes no sense.
Thirdly, even if (once again for some completely incomprehensible reason) we couldn't either get the recipes and ingredients from the foreign countries, or we for some reason couldn't prepare the meals, or for some reason we couldn't have those foreign chefs come here under a work visa to run restaurants, and we couldn't import the dishes in question, in other words, if we lived in this extreme bizarro universe where for some strange reason none of that is possible, and we would be limited to just eating the cuisine that was developed in our own countries... so what?
Seriously, so what?
Every European country has very rich cuisine. The North American countries have very rich cuisine. Heck, many of those countries have much richer and varied cuisine than many of those foreign non-European non-American countries. What exactly would we be missing? So what if, for some strange reason, we could never eat curry or kebab? Go to a French or Italian restaurant and choose from among hundreds of exotic dishes. You can go to such restaurants every day for a year and never eat the same meal twice.
So I ask once again: Even if for a strange reason we couldn't have any foreign cuisine, so what?
It's literally the most asinine seriously-presented argument for mass immigration ever.
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