A report released in September by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine noted that more immigrants buy into the American dream than do native-born Americans: 70 percent believe their children will be better off than themselves, up from 60 percent 20 years ago. Among American-born parents, only 50 percent believe that.

In fact, the children of the least-educated immigrants are much better educated than their parents. They find much better jobs.

“Current immigrants and their descendants are integrating into U.S. society,” the report concluded. “Integration increases over time, with immigrants becoming more like the native-born with more time in the country, and with the second and third generations becoming more like other native-born Americans than their parents were.”

Richard Alba and Nancy Foner, sociologists at the City University of New York, just published the book “Strangers No More,” (Princeton University Press). They compare the challenges facing low-status immigrants in North America and Western Europe. In the end, they do not make a definitive call on which experience is better.

“There are complex arrays of similarities and differences,” Professor Alba told me.

Still, they identify unique hurdles in the way of immigrants that make it difficult for those coming from outside the European Union to get ahead in Europe.

Among the most notable is clearly Europe’s segmented labor market, difficult for newcomers to crack. In the United States, less-educated immigrants may work for little pay. But the vast majority of them work. The employment rate of immigrants is higher than that of natives. In Europe it is lower.