While there is some evidence of anti-immigrant discrimination in the workforce, the most important culprit behind these statistics is the mismatch between the requirements of the European job market and the skills that migrants bring with them and that their children are able to acquire in the first generation of resettlement. This mismatch is accentuated by European labor rules that impose heavy costs on employers beyond the wages they pay. Those costs discourage the hiring of new arrivals whose skills typically lag behind those of the native-born. Generous social-welfare systems reduce the pressure on immigrants to accept low-wage employment. And all of this occurs in the context of the severe economic-austerity policies required to preserve the euro currency.

Put bluntly: The European labor model is inconsistent with a mass-migration society. And since the nations of Europe have—wittingly or unwittingly—allowed themselves to become mass-migration societies, their labor model will have to change in a more American direction. They need to create lots of entry-level jobs, while simultaneously reducing social-welfare benefits that enable people to refuse work.

2) Turn to assimilation next.

Europeans have long looked askance at America’s tradition of flag-waving. What they tend not to understand is that this tradition originated in the weakness, not the strength, of American national identity. The Pledge of Allegiance was instituted not because Americans are super patriotic, but because American leaders worried that a country recently riven by civil war—and then repeopled by the great wave of immigration to the U.S. of 1880-1914—was not nearly patriotic enough. The Americans of a century ago made a cult of Americanness precisely because they understood that Americanism could not be taken for granted. It had to be inculcated.

Europe in the 21st century faces for the first time its own version of the challenge faced by the United States in the 19th century and again by the United States today. The task is made harder because 21st-century people find it much harder than their predecessors to define and defend established culture against nonconforming minorities. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair stoked dissent within his own Labour Party when he expounded on “British values” such as equality of respect and allegiance to the rule of law—and insisted on the “duty to integrate.”

“No distinctive culture or religion supersedes our duty to be part of an integrated United Kingdom,” Blair said. He warned those who would not accept this duty: “Don’t come here. We don’t want the hate-mongers, whatever their race, religion, or creed.”

3) Set positive examples.

It’s not enough to exhort people to assimilate and integrate: They have to be assured that assimilation and integration are achievable. Nineteenth-century America was filled with institutions that offered pathways for newcomers: the Catholic Church, the police, political parties, business success. Migrants to Europe have to feel that joining the system and playing by the rules will yield rewards. They see that in politics and the media to some degree, but—especially on the European continent—to a much lesser extent in other institutions. Systematic affirmative action on the American scale is impracticable in Europe for all kinds of reasons, not least the problem of defining who should receive it. But expending extra energy to promote second- and third-generation newcomers to visible leadership roles is feasible and necessary.