Why America is so much better than Europe at immigration (Kelsey Piper and Alexander Kustov, Mar 18, 2026, The Argument)
Americans are divided over immigration — in a recent YouGov/Economist poll, 55% said legal immigration should be increased or kept the same, and 46% said immigration makes the U.S. better off (only 24% say it makes the country worse off).That’s a lot more support for immigration than you see across the Atlantic. In a YouGov poll of Germany, 32% of respondents said that legal immigration over the last 10 years was about right or too low, and only 24% said legal immigration has been mostly good for Germany. In the same survey of France, 33% said legal immigration was about right or too low, and 22% said it has been mostly good for France. Across every Western European country surveyed, there was about 50% support for ending all new migration and requiring many existing migrants to leave.
So in America, immigration is hotly contested; in Western Europe, it’s generally way underwater. But we’re not just talking about a difference in public opinion. By almost any metric you choose to name, immigration is working far better in the United States than non-EU immigration is working in Europe.
In the United States, immigrants are actually more likely to be employed than non-immigrants (but only just). In Germany, on the other hand, OECD data reveals that only 58% of non-EU immigrant prime-aged adults work, compared to 78% of non-immigrant Germans. In France it’s 52% (of non-EU immigrants) vs 66% (of French people).
Notably, in Spain, where immigration isn’t deep underwater politically (47% said legal immigration was about right or too low, and 42% said it has been mostly good for Spain) immigrant labor force participation is higher than native labor force participation.
In the United States, immigrants commit much less crime than natives; in Europe, non-EU immigrants generally commit much more crime than natives.