I picked up my copy of the Dallas Morning News the other morning and was stunned by the top story on the front page: It dealt with tensions rising in Frisco over the emergence of South Asians who now call the community home.

I am not going to pass judgment on the rightness or wrongness of the concerns. I know that it’s real, that some North Texans are concerned that their culture is being changed by an emergence of immigrants from a region far from this hemisphere.

Frisco has grown tremendously since 2000, with a population these days of something just a bit south of 300,000 residents. Indian Americans once accounted for about 2% of the population; today they number about 33%, according to the Morning News.

It’s a changing world out there, ladies and gents. We had better get used to it.

I found a similar tension arising in another North Texas city not long after I began reporting on the city council there. Sachse, which straddles the Collin-Dallas County line, remains a smallish city of about 30,000. But my first exposure to the city brought forth complaints from a couple of residents who are afraid that Sharia law — the ultraconservatve tenet is Islam — will be taught in schools in Sachse.

Uhh, no. That won’t happen. The First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits religion from being taught in public schools. It doesn’t prohibit citizens from forming private schools to teach religion. We are free to practice our faith or not practice it. It’s our call.

I am going to hope that my new friends in Sachse keep their wits about them. I want them to settle down and allow their new neighbors to establish themselves as devoted Texans. I am going to wish the same for the folks in Frisco, a city that is undergoing an enormous evolution from a sleepy burg into a city bursting with commerce.