> And this is not unrelated; just as South African Apartheid could maintain a
> nice welfare state for its white minority, the white working class of Europe
> could more easily maintain a nice welfare state as long as they kept
> immigration down.
The heyday of the EU welfare state was in the 1960s and 1970s, when vast numbers of immigrants moved to European countries via guestworker programs.
> I will generally say without qualification that, overall, the United States
> immigration policy, despite its problems, is the greatest on earth, the most
> welcoming to the poor, the most multi-racial in its breadth, and the
> quickest to convert new immigrants into full citizens.
This was only partly true in 1992, but just not so in 2002. The EU has become an immigrant culture -- 10% of the German population, for example, are foreigners, and many draw welfare benefits. Eurostat says official annual net migration into the EU has averaged a respectable 800,000 over the course of the 1990s (the real figure is higher, of course). Yes, the EU has its share of xenophobic morons, but all things considered, the new, high-tech Europe has come a long way in a short amount of time.
Apropos the complexities of the new Europe: I'm just finishing up a delightful bunch of short stories by Pham Thi Hoai, "Sunday's Menu", a Vietnamese-born writer who lives in Germany. The original translation was in German, but the French version is top-notch ("Menu du Dimanche" from Actes Sud).
-- Dennis