European Affairs
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The countries of Western Europe are
countries of immigration to very nearly
the same extent as the United States,
judged by the proportion of the population
made up of immigrants and their
descendents. Yet the contrasts could
hardly be more stark in the way people
and policy-makers on opposite sides of
the Atlantic look at the issue.
While many in the U.S. are agitated
about the prevalence of unauthorized
immigration, lately focused on Hispanics,
most acknowledge the benefits of
legal immigration. In Western Europe,
immigration is almost universally regarded
as a problem, though some – like
the Blair government in Britain – see it
as a challenge that can be solved while
others – on the political right, such as
the Danish People's Party and Jean-
Marie Le Pen's National Front in France
– think the only answer is to bring it, as
much as possible, to an end.
The contrasting attitudes toward immigration
can be traced back to mega trends
in history, culture, and philosophies
of governance. But current public
policy also plays its part.
At the risk of over-generalizing, U.S.
policy for at least the last ten years has
been to bar immigrants from the public welfare
system and open the labor market
wide. European governments, especially
for asylum-seekers, have largely
done the opposite, providing at least limited
public assistance but restricting
their access to the formal work force.
By choosing to protect the labor
market and share some of the benefits of
the welfare state, European governments
have reinforced – and in some cases created
– public prejudice toward immigrants
as irretrievably incompatible, unmotivated
scroungers with little to
contribute to their host societies. Of
course, this perception falls most heavily
on the most visibly different, by virtue of
skin color, dress, or habits.
As a result, European governments
in practice are preoccupied with immigrant
integration – or rather with its failure.
This anxiety is fed by the increasingly vocal and occasionally violent reactions
of frustration among immigrant
communities – a trend matched by the
rise of right-wing anti-immigrant political
parties and a broad unease about the future of the European economic
model. Fears of visible – especially Muslim
– minorities have been fanned by a
number of flamboyant acts of terrorism
perpetrated by Islamist radicals.
In the United States, on the other
hand, immigrant integration is a policy
afterthought, as Michael Fix and Margie
McHugh of the Migration Policy Institute
have put it: "Few resources have
been dedicated to the issue, the institutional
infrastructure is skeletal, and there
are few strong advocates who are steeped
in the issue. Policy-makers at all levels of
government have little sense of what
state or local policies have been adopted,
how much they cost, how well they
work, and what makes them successful."
Remarkably, under those circumstances,
immigrant integration in the United
States has been, relatively, quite successful.
Despite unprecedented levels of immigration
throughout the 1990s and
continuing into the new century, immigrants
and their children continue to
learn English: by the third generation,
most no longer speak their ancestral
tongue. In general, they climb the economic ladder, participate in civic life and, quite commonly, marry outside their ethnic community. This pattern seems likely to prevail with the current
wave of immigrants of Hispanic origin.
That is not to say that immigrants to
the United States have no problems of
integration. The poverty rate is high
among immigrant families with full-time
workers, exclusion from the social safety
net increases their vulnerability and
many immigrant students have trouble
learning limited proficiency in English.
Crucially however, the sense of opportunity remains strong.
Trying to explain the success of immigrants in the United States is a source of
debate. Some analysts attribute it to the
government's laissez faire approach to integration while others insist that immigrants succeed despite the lack of pro-active measures to help them integrate.
Undoubtedly immigrant integration
could work more smoothly if governments at all levels from the federal to the
municipal were more engaged with the
issue on the ground.
What seems beyond dispute is that
structural factors in the economy
and society support integration in ways
that contrast sharply with those of western Europe.
The flexibility and strength of the
labor market must come at the top of the
list. Although two-thirds of legal immigration in the United States is made up
of people joining relatives already in residence – about the same proportion as in
France – a very high proportion of them
can and do enter the labor force. A long
running economic boom and low entry
barriers to the labor market have produced historically low unemployment
rates (overall less than five at 8.9 percent)
among natives and immigrants alike. In 2005
France, national unemployment hovered
stubbornly at percent in but
was twice that among immigrants and
nearly 40 percent for immigrant youth.
The United Kingdom, U.S.-level, with its less heavily
regulated economy and level unemployment rate, has seen some second
generation immigrant groups, particularly Indians and Chinese, outperform
the native-born in the labor market. But
others such as children of Afro-Caribbean and Pakistani immigrants,
have higher unemployment and lower
earnings than native born white Britons.
In the United States, immigrants
who are members of racial minorities
may take advantage of affirmative action
programs intended to overcome the effects of past discrimination toward native-born minorities. Institutions of the
federal government, such as the armed
forces and the civil service, have acted as
escalators for successive immigrant
groups, creating opportunities for higher
education and professional employment.
Discrimination has by no means been
eliminated, but immigrants and the children of immigrants are more fully represented in public office the media, the
top ranks of business, the universities,
and other leading sectors than they are
in Western Europe.
Another institution of American life
that works to promote immigrant integration is organized religion. The United
States remains the most religious of
Western industrialized countries, and has
avoided the bitter debates about secularism that have damaged relations between
European states and Muslim immigrant
communities. Overt religious behavior is
foreign to most modern Europeans – and
abhorrent to some – whereas it is looked
upon with favor in the contemporary
United States. Muslims may be regarded
with suspicion by some Americans, but it
is for imputed political beliefs rather than
because they are religious. It is almost inconceivable that the headscarf debates
that have raged in France and Germany
would be taken up as a matter of federal
policy in the United States, where libertarian instincts about personal behavior
are more entrenched than in more collectivist societies.
That laissez faire attitude toward individual behavior spills over into contrasting American and European notions
of integration. The American tradition of
pluralism that tolerates interest groups
encourages minority factions to consolidate and thus reinforce their group identity in order to participate in civic life.
The influence of political interest groups
of immigrant origin in U.S. politics is
legendary: the Greek lobby, the Armenian
lobby, and the Jewish lobby are the
role models for newer immigrant arrivals
seeking to articulate their concerns
and interests through U.S. political parties,
electoral politics, and public institutions.
Europe's mainstream political institutions
give little encouragement to the organized expression of migrant interests.
Integration is much more demanding
of the immigrant, and less so of
mainstream institutions. As Ulf Hedetof
of Aalborg University said about Denmark,
"The ground rule is that minorities
must learn how to come to terms
with Denmark – not vice versa." 1
The assimilationist tendency was
made explicit in the new French Immigration
Law of July 24, 2006. "For the
First time in French history", writes Kara
Murphy, "a law explicitly states the integration
responsibilities of immigrants....
Immigrants must sign a 'welcome and integration' contract and take French language
and civics courses. Before being
permitted to apply for permanent residence,
immigrants must accordingly
prove that they are 'well-integrated' into
French society. The government understands
integration in this regard to mean
that the immigrant respects and complies
with the principles of the French Republic
and has a sufficient knowledge of the
French language." 2
Every state has the sovereign right to
determine who shall enter its territory,
for how long and under what conditions.
Europe and the United States, and all
other industrialized or industrializing
countries, must now compete for access
to the world's human capital. The European
countries, with low and declining
birth rates, will need immigrants to fill
both highly skilled jobs and less skilled
ones, to support their public institutions
and renew their cultures. Those that are
overly defensive may raise the hurdles to
integration to such daunting heights that
many immigrants, including those with
the highest potential, decide not to make
the effort. Societies that cannot find ways
to welcome immigrants will place themselves,
in the not-too-distant future, at a disadvantage
that is more threatening than the changes required to adapt
to newcomers.
1 Migration Information Source, November 1, 2006
2 Ibid.
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