A Wednesday visit to Hall County by several German tourists served to illuminate a reality prominent in the U.S., and increasingly in the forefront of modern Europe — the tide of immigration. The group from the German-American Institute in Tuebingen, Germany, a medieval university town in southern Germany, was led by Penny Pinson, a former Northeast Georgia resident. The institute’s mission is to promote German-American cultural awareness, and the 19 German visitors learned about how Gainesville-Hall County has tackled issues of diversity: from preservation of culture, to English integration, to the consequences of living illegally in the U.S. within a patchwork of laws and boundaries.