I second that. My ESL students are far more hardworking and they tend to be more respectful of teachers in general. What I really love about ESL students is that you can really see the progress that they make. With regular English students, it's not always evident. With ESL, I have students who barely speak the language at the beginning writing essays by the end. It's gratifying for all of us.

As someone who has taught English speaking kids and non English speakers, I've found the non English speakers to be more focused on learning. For the most part, they are more polite and do not have many of the negative characteristics of the English speaking kids, like being fresh and disrespectful. Ask any ESL teacher why he or she is teaching ESL as opposed to teaching English to English speaking kids and that is probably the answer you will get.