Immigration.

Two specialists, one American and one European, lay out the political-cultural models on immigration rooted on opposite sides of the Atlantic. As a case study, the influx of migrants to Britain from Poland weighed on the EU constitutional referendum. To illuminate the consequences, four "personal viewpoints"--from Poles and Brits--clarify immigration's far-reaching social and political implications. A book review (on page 108) analyses the issue of headscarves (and sometimes veils) as a symbolic flashpoint for Muslim minorities in Europe.

There is no "immigration issue" on any official Transatlantic agenda: the small, one-sided flow between the European Union and the United States is controlled.

But the topic has become a hot button political issue in almost every Western nation. Since it is largely a domestic issue (of assimilation or its absence), formal discussions about it largely concern best practices--comparisons sometimes but usually contrasts--between the U.S. and Europe, between France and Britain, etc. In reality, the immigration flows in all of these countries individually affect all the nations in the larger community of democracies. Americans worry about the impact of the growth of Muslim minorities in Europe. Inside the EU, older richer member-states grapple with migrant flows from Eastern Europe unleashed by enlargement. And all the European countries worry that Euro-centric re]exes in the United States, due to earlier U.S. immigration, are liable now to tilt under the growing weight of Hispanic immigrants.

Our main articles describe the contrasting paradigms of integration between the EU and the U.S.: European societies seem to fit the generalization formulated by Milton Friedman that no nation with a high minimum wage (i.e. strong system of welfare and social protection) can afford immigration. But even in the U.S., a nation that has traditionally described itself as a product of immigration, there are now questions, with the Hispanic influx, about its ability to function as a melting pot. These questions often have cultural dimensions that can outweigh the economic arguments.

Chauvinistically-tinged overtones have emerged largely because the flows of migrants...