Fareed Zakaria on US versus European immigration

What every US immigrant dreams of before arriving

Zakaria conveys his feelings on why the European model of immigration will perhaps not work in the United States. With all the talk of the guest workers program, which basically does not ensure any kind of eventual permanent status for the immigrant worker, this article may explain why perhaps Americans should not go the European route when dealing with immigrants.

Germany, it seems, had a german green card program targetted at Indian IT professionals in particular in the late 90s.

Watching the U.S. economy soar during the '90s, the Germans had decided that they, too, needed to go the high-technology route. But how? In the late '90s, the answer seemed obvious: Indians. After all, Indian entrepreneurs accounted for one of every three Silicon Valley start-ups. So the German government decided that it would lure Indians to Germany just as America does: by offering green cards. Officials created something called the German Green Card and announced that they would issue 20,000 in the first year.

Obviously they did not do a good job of advertising it, because as an IT professional in the late 90s, I had no earthly clue such a thing even existed. Obviously, it was a big flop but not because of lack of publicity but because of the crappy nature of the program. It was nowhere close to an American Green Card.

The German Green Card was misnamed, I argued, because it never, under any circumstances, translated into German citizenship. The U.S. green card, by contrast, is an almost automatic path to becoming American (after five years and a clean record)......
So Germany was asking bright young professionals to leave their country, culture and families, move thousands of miles away, learn a new language and work in a strange land—but without any prospect of ever being part of their new home. Germany was sending a signal, one that was accurately received in India and other countries, and also by Germany's own immigrant community.

The *current* American approach of a (student visa->)work permit->green card->citizenship gives immigrant people (yours truly, for instance and even Zakaria himself), a ray of hope that there will be some eventuality to this whole saga of immigration and perhaps that makes them feel welcome. If you left everything and everyone dear to you, moved to a foreign country and worked your whole life towards making that country a better place, isnt that a nice gift to get in the bargain - the feeling of belonging and being welcome?

Beyond the purely economic issue, however, there is the much deeper one that defines America—to itself, to its immigrants and to the world. How do we want to treat those who are already in this country, working and living with us? How do we want to treat those who come in on visas or guest permits? These people must have some hope, some reasonable path to becoming Americans.