Politics of Immigration in the United States

The politicization of immigration in the United States has always been different from that of France and Britain. In general, although there are clear similarities in the ways immigration issues have been framed, the cross-national difference between the United States, on one hand, and France and Britain, on the other, are striking. While both the United States and the two European countries have focused on immigration as an identity issue, the former did so most intensely during the period before 1930, while the latter framed the issue in this way during the period of post-World War II immigration.