what's the difference between european and american immigration?

Long before the discovery of the new worlds from 1492 onwards Europe had ceased to be a geographical area of immigration by forcible invasion or otherwise; but the American colonies were founded to take surplus populations and the new nation actively encouraged new settlers.

Naturally, there had always been a great deal of movement between populations within the European nation states, but the threat of invasion from a non-white civilization was negligible at the start of the 15th century.

The last time England had been invaded, for instance, was by the Normans in 1066 - hardly an earth shattering experience because they were close neighbors with common ideals; and the same goes for the migration of the Huguenots, the French Protestants, after the 1685 Edict of Nantes revoked their protection, and the Russian Jews after the pogroms of 1881. The French Huguenots and the Russian Jews were foreign, but they were white and as such they blended with the existing population.

It is true that there always had been a threat from the Ottoman Turks, but their incursions were restricted to the eastern boundaries of Europe and north-western Europe had been essentially safe for thousands of years. (That the EU is now in the process of admitting Moslem Turkey into its fold is an amazing turn of events!)

As most Europeans had never seen a black person before in their lives, it was a shock for them to suddenly cope with the arrival of wave after wave of non-European immigrants with legitimate citizenship rights granted as a result of post-WWII colonial independence.

America did not face this sort of problem because it had always had a black population and it has always been an immigrant nation. More importantly, because of its geographical location and strict immigration policy it had almost total control over who arrived on its shores, and absolute control over who was granted citizenship.

Americans - of whom the most prominent racial group has always been German, followed by Irish, then African-American and English - may complain about the problem of Mexicans illegally crossing the border between the two countries, but this would be like ancient Celts complaining about ancient Britons invading their territory and vice versa. It's a neighbor's dispute, not a clash of civilizations such as that being experienced in Europe with illegal migrants arriving from distant lands. When settlement in America approaches the age of settlement in Europe, Mexican migration will not be considered a problem at all.

why is racism the colonial legacy?

When the colonies matured, embracing all of the institutions and ideals of the mother nations, independence was ultimately granted - either by conflict or peaceful means - but the racism of the colonial legacy, like the guilt of slavery, is one that is still hurting today.

The new worlds in North and South America had their own unique history in that the British and Spanish colonies had to import and enslave Africans to do their work - creating a problem of what to do with these people when the abolitionist movement ended slavery.

Liberia in Africa was created by the North Americans for this purpose, but few Africans wanted to leave. Having lived in the colonies for as long as their white masters, the Africans considered themselves to be as much an American as anyone else. And quite rightly so. In this respect, the new western civilization as it developed in America is distinctly different to how it developed in other colonies.

The colonial legacy in other colonies - or dominions such as British India - was not slavery but a unique problem related to race and citizenship. Colonial independence led to dual citizenship of the mother country as well as the new nation, and once given a passport to Europe many of the formerly indigenous populations used it to their advantage and in doing so sparked racism in the white nations they migrated to.

Because of its foundation on slavery, the racism that developed in the American colonies - which is still evident today - is very different to that which developed in post-WWII Europe.

The pre-WWII European colonial governments mostly had a benevolent attitude towards native populations, and in granting former colonies or dominions independence it was probably never expected that the populations of these places would want to use their former colonial status to emigrate to the lands of their former governors.

Racism, as it developed in post-WWII Europe, was a backlash against massive immigration. Europeans were in war recovery, rationing continued for many years after the war, everything was in short supply and they did not like their jobs and housing and schools and meagre government benefits being taken over by a mass of people from former colonies - especially those people from countries which had not been touched by the war.

In Europe, there is little, if any, intrinsic hatred of non-white people as evidenced in America with a history of slavery. What is called 'racism' in Europe is similar to the hostility shown by Americans to Mexicans.

Basically, nobody likes their jobs and houses and schools and government benefits being taken over by people who have no birthright to it, and it is unfortunate that a different skin color was involved.