First off, before we begin the discussion, let me just request that there be:
1. No racism.
2. No flaming another poster or attacking another poster, but rather attacking the argument presented if deemed necessary.
3. A civil discourse and mutual respect between all participants as this is a sensitive and controversial topic.
Now, as everyone who keeps up with the news might have heard, there have been quite a number of notable incidents within greater Europe of anti-immigration extremism. Even Anders-Breivik, the mass murderer of Norway, can be construed as an anti-immigration extremist as in his neurotic manifesto of hatred, he stated that he wanted to attack the left-wing of his country for being pro-immigration and thus, in his view, anti-Norway.
This stance is echoed by the increasingly active and militant neo-Nazi groups in countries such as Greece, Russia and Germany. Greece even seems to be allowing neo-Nazis into the mainstream (as evidenced by recent announcements by some municipalities in Greece for victims of crimes to report them to their local neo-Nazi branches.) This shift of law enforcement to political parties is frighteningly similar to what happened in both Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia before the two regimes in each of those countries reached the zenith of their respective power.
There have also been a number of anti-immigration crimes, such as random beatings of migrant workers in Russia by neo-Nazis, the annexation of whole towns in Germany by neo-Nazis, and lastly the proclamation of Greek neo-Nazis in its parliament that "all immigrants should be deported and that Greece should be surrounded by land mines to ward them off," (source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ork-camps.html) [period]
Also, recent polls by various groups, including the BBC, show that in terms of public opinion, anti-immigration feelings have been on the rise according to most trends. This seems to coincide with the toughening economy. Furthermore, it suggested that Europeans of many countries (the U.K. seemed to differ here) seem to not view foreign ethnic minorities as fellow countrymen. Overall, it is evident that Europe is slumping towards an anti-immigrant stage in the 21st century and that is alarming to anyone who has analysed history to a far enough extent to realize what comes next.
Why do you guys think this is?
Personally, I think this is because of quite a number of reasons. The first of these reasons would be that I think most European countries simply don't have as an immigration-friendly culture as their North American counterparts. They seem to be, even to an objective outsider such as me, more tight-knit in that they are not as accepting of outsiders, especially those who look different. It must also be more difficult to adapt and assimilate into European countries that do not have English as their national language (again, this may be why the U.K. is somewhat of an anomaly of this European trend) since immigrants must actually generally learn those languages upon arriving there as opposed to how many immigrants may already know English since it is the global language.
To contrast this, however, we have the United States. The United States is essentially, in the 21st century, but it also was into the mid to late 20th century, the most immigrant-friendly country in the entire world, and certainly the west. In its national ethos, it is repeatedly stated that it is a land of immigrants. To accentuate this, there's also a great number of visible minorities within the Great American Melting pot which makes arriving here as a new immigrant probably less alienating and disenfranchising.