Opinion: European amnesty

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Amnesty doesn’t seem to be such a dirty word in Southern Europe, The New York Times reports: Europe has had 20 legalizations in the past 25 years, granting visas to about 4 million illegal immigrants. Spain alone accounts for six of them since 1985.

So how’s it going? Families get to be together and wages are up, but so is unemployment (particularly among the foreign-born), and that means illegal immigration is now a matter of political controversy.

The article also notes that France, Germany, and the Netherlands -- countries that don’t have American-style citizenship by birth rights, and/or where immigrants haven’t felt so welcome -- are raising complaints about newly-legalized immigrants migrating throughout the European Union. Right-wingers in Switzerland tried to give towns the power to deny citizenship petitions by secret ballot (the measure was defeated). And immigrants have new, powerful detractors in Italy, as the editorial board noted last month.

All of which is to say: at least the U.S. has the edge against Europe when it comes to assimilating legal immigrants, even if it could take a few notes on legalizing illegal ones (which, in turn, would go a long way toward helping them fit in).