There are many parallels between U.S. and European Union (EU) immigration trends and policies despite the clear and important differences in their decision-making institutions. Among the common problems these two entities face are the following: a global economy that promotes (or perhaps requires) a freer migration of capital and labor; fluctuations in the economic cycle that alter the perceived value that immigrants make to national economies at given points in time; greater racial, national, and cultural diversity in the immigrants and refugees who seek entry into the United States and Western Europe; political backlash from the far right against the growing presence of third-country migrants and cooptation of their issues by more mainstream, center-right parties; changing patterns of foreign migration from single male sojourners to permanent resident families; the failure of official border controls to stop the flow of illegal immigrants and false asylum applicants; and mounting pressure from cosmopolitans who deplore both the direct and indirect racial discrimination that these policies have spawned and who hold out an ideal of a borderless, prejudice-free international community that directly challenges traditional concepts of national sovereignty and citizenship. But for all these similarities, there are also important differences in how the United States and Europe have handled these new challenges, and some of this variation can be traced to institutional factors.

To pose the democratic theory question most abstractly, the issue is whether particular institutional arrangements bias the attainment of responsive and efficient immigration policies in predictable ways.