Coming up short on cultural exchange

It's true when they say everything changed on 9/11, but it wasn't our level of safety, it was our level of civility. You hear about incidents like this all too often.

SAN MARINO, Calif., Jan. 7 -- A plan to build a large, classical Chinese garden at the Huntington Library is in jeopardy because U.S. immigration officials have denied visas to 13 Chinese stonemasons needed to assemble ornate bridges and pavilions.

The artisans were expected to arrive this month to help create the first phase of the 12-acre garden. But the government refused to grant visas in September because it did not consider the project an important cultural exchange program, library officials said.

The project will have to close down if they can't get the decision overturned. Apparently no one else has the skills to assemble the pieces the artisans have already hand carved at home. What possible danger could they present to us? There's only 13 of them. Even if they were spies of some kind, perhaps the government could pull a few DHS agents off citizen surveillance and watch them while they're here for only a few weeks.

And the same goes for the six musicians who were refused visas to perform there last year. Cultural exchange is an important tool of good diplomatic relationships between both governments and ordinary people. If 9/11 is allowed to change that, we're only shortchanging ourselves.