"Impoverished" signed languages

[BARBARA GERNER DE GARCIA]

A colleague visiting from Brazil, met a hearing teacher of the deaf yesterday
 from Mongolia. This teacher told her, among other things, that the local or
indigenous sign language was very "poor" in terms of number of signs and
that she believed the solution was to import signs from another signed
 language,possibly ASL (or perhaps import another sign language).
        My friend, I think, made a convincing argument against this. My
question is, what does one say in this kind of situation. Some of us run into
it often.
Barbara Gerner de Garcia
Gallaudet University