What Can the United States Learn from Europe? Symposium on Fixing a Broken Immigration System

This article gives an overview of the European “immigration system,” which includes both immigration control and immigrant integration. Special attention is given to the Euro-specific division of competences between supranational and national levels, which is still evolving. Some lessons, both positive and negative, for the United States are drawn. Most importantly, there cannot be a coherent “immigration system” but only a patchwork of divided legal regimes guided by conflicting principles, with friction between them likely to be permanent.