My first day back in New York after a year in Berlin, I got on the subway and found my end of the car dominated by an obscenity-shouting black man with a crutch

My first day back in New York after a year in Berlin, I got on the subway and found my end of the car dominated by an obscenity-shouting black man with a crutch and a suitcase spilling garbage. Apparently she has never met a homeless Roma on the U-Bahn. Except in Berlin people won't stop to help her when she pretends to fall getting off the train, they'll spit at her or throw trash. My friend David Abraham, a historian and legal scholar, gave a fascinating talk at the American Academy in Berlin in which he suggested that the European welfare state is linked to ethnic homogeneity: people are more willing to share with those who seem like themselves. Muslim immigration will be the moral test, and not just for Germany but for the rest of Europe as well. I know the article is about Germany. But there's ample, recent, evidence that when the welfare states of Europe have problems, it's blamed (fairly or unfairly) on immigrants. Similarly in the U.S., anti-immigration proponents often blame the drain recent immigrants have on social services as part of the justification for extreme policies. Recent mass deportation events in France show that this sentiment is probably true. Likewise, in the time I've spent in Germany, many people expressed discontent with the wave of Muslim immigrants and the subsequent strain on the welfare state of all these new, poor, undereducated people suddenly showing up to the new promised land. Europe is undergoing some massive growing pains as it has emerged as the new go-to place for the poor unwashed masses of the world. These massive waves of immigration are very new to the continent (and especially to the individual countries). But I think the American experiment can show that in the long run, relatively open immigration policies pay off. Everybody forgets that the poor unwashed masses from a foreign country that suddenly show up on your shores are there for primarily one reason...to work and to work hard. That kind of free, positive, energy needs to be harnessed. In two or three generations it pays off with so many ways. If it's not harnessed, it goes someplace else, often not in a constructive way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Riots http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Riots