The Promise of Citizenship

Fareed Zakaria has an interesting column on immigration in today's Washington Post "To Become an American" in which he makes the point that America has done a much better job at integrating immigrants (the legal ones at least) than has Europe, because attaining citizenship is relatively easy and straightforward for American green-card holders, whereas in Europe, attaining citizenship is discouraged. The social ramifications of having a class of guest-workers who will probably never become citizens is not hard to predict, and are on display in Europe today. It is a good point to keep in mind in light of Bush's impractical plan to allow illegal immigrants a six-year window in which to work, followed by a forced repatriation, or the absurd Republican House plan to define illegal immigrants as felons, making their eventual integration impossible.