   Analog SF magazine did an article on a similar subject quite a few
years ago.  The question was, if an alien spacecraft landed in
Washington, D.C., what was the proper organization to deal with it: The
State Department (alien ambassadors), the Defense Department (alien
invaders), the Immigration and Naturalization Service (illegal aliens),
the Department of the Interior (new non-human species), etc.  It was
very much a question of our perception of the aliens, not of anything
intrinsic in their nature.  The bibliography for the article cited a
philosophical paper (the name and author of which I sadly forget; I
believe the author was Italian) on what constitutes a legal and/or moral
person, i.e., a being entitled to the rights normally accorded to a
person.  The paper was quite interesting, as I recall.

   I think you'd have to be very careful here if the answer is yes.  The
human track record on helping those poor underpriveleged cultures (does
underpriveleged mean not having enough priveleges?) is terrible.  The
usual result is the destruction or radical reorganization of the
culture.  This may not always be wrong, but that's the way to bet.
