PARIS -- The United States is proud to call itself a nation of immigrants. The descendants of Indian tribes that were living on its soil when Christopher Columbus first arrived on America's shores now represent only 0.7 percent of its 290 million inhabitants.
More than 11 percent of today's Americans were born abroad. Roughly 600,000 men and women of various origins are solemnly sworn in as U.S. citizens every year. France is rapidly becoming a nation of immigrants as well but with a difference: Immigration is threatening to become one of its biggest problems.
ln the same way that the U.S. has welcomed generation after generation of religious, ethnic, political refugees and economic refugees, France has often opened its gates to starving or persecuted peoples.