America is not the only country wrestling with immigration. As the Senate was passing its

version of an immigration bill, Spain was calling for European Union to help it stem a flood of migrants from west Africa to the Canary Island. The EU sent patrol boats and aircraft to the seas which thousands have crossed (and where hundreds have died in the hope of getting into Europe). Britain and France are reforming their immigration laws. Britain and Italy are fretting over the deportation of immigrant criminals. Six countries favour European "integration contracts"—tests of would—be citizens' knowledge of their host countries as a pre-condition for getting passports.

But if both sides of the pond are experiencing similar upheavals, there is a big difference between their debates. Americans are letting it all hang out. Tumultuous demonstrations clog the streets. Politicians, lobbyists and interest groups clog the talk shows. In Europe, debate does not grip countries in the same way. After second-generation immigrants staged their suburban car-flagrations in France last year, the prime minister weirdly downplayed the riots' significance. Questions about the impact of immigration merge into issues such as asylum, and even Islamist terror. Debate exists, but it is distorted and submerged.

"The big difference in the way Europeans and Americans look at immigration," argues Kathleen Newland of the Migration Policy Institute in Washiongton, DC, "springs from the fact that America protects its welfare system from immigrants but leaves its labour markets open, while the EU protects its labour markets and leaves it s welfare system open." Immigrants to Europe are welcomed with welfare benefits but cannot get jobs (their unemployment rate is far higher than average). America makes it easy even for illegal immigrants to get jobs but stops even legal ones claiming means-tested welfare benefits or subsidized housing.

The result is that in America political debate centers on illegal immigration, and there is no sense that legal immigrants impose burdens on others. In Europe things are different. There, even legal immigrants are often seen as sponging on others through welfare receipts; and the fact that some have taken jobs which would not otherwise be done so cheaply is forgotten. In Europe, says Danny Sriskandarajah of Britain's Institute for Public Policy Research, it is harder to talk about immigration as an economic issue. Instead, all migrants are caught in web of suspicion.

Politically, the debate is different, too. In America, immigration is a mainstream issue, and splits both parties, Republicans especially. Not so in Europe. With few exceptions, the parties most willing to raise immigration as a political issue lie outside the mainstream-notably (though not only) far-right parties such as France's National Front and the Danish People's Party. The Netherlands is an exception: there, the politics of immigration entered the mainstream after two critics of multiculturalism were murdered. Britain is a partial exception, too: both Labour and Conservatives have espoused the cause of immigration control. But for the most part, big parties of center-left and center-right have not made deep reform. of immigration a high priority.

Because immigration has been the preserve of the fringe, Europe's debate about it is bedeviled with accusations of racism (which does exist). Naturally, this harms those who want to impose controls: they are tainted by association. But paradoxically, it does not help those who back immigration and benefit from it either (such as employers of immigrant labour). Europe has no equivalent to the alliance of Senator John McCain and Ted Kennedy (usually political foes) who sponsored the Senate bill. Without a space in the political center for friends of immigration, public fears of immigration go unaddressed and unallayed.

And on the other side, there is less political

A．Six countries approve of the European "integration contracts".

B．Britain and France are amending their immigration laws.

C．Britain and Italy are tortured by the deportation of immigrant criminals.

D．Spain was trying to stop the pour of immigrant criminals from west Africa to its country.