ABSTRACT
In Italy, the newspaper La Repubblica carried out two surveys on immigration - the first in January 1989, the second in March 1990. Until 1965, half of all immigration to the United States (US) came from Europe. Whichever conservative/progressive position one cares to adopt, the fact remains that before the debt crisis broke in 1982, the US was already experiencing an uncontrolled, perhaps uncontrollable, influx of immigrants, half of them Mexicans and a lot of them illegal, in spite of the liberalised immigration law voted in 1965. US immigration officials estimate that for every one who gets caught, at least two illegal immigrants make it. Europe’s historical experience with immigration has been recent, brief and geographically limited. Clandestine immigration remains a big headache in Europe and it is on the upswing. France is not the only European country coping with unprecedented influxes of asylum seekers.
