In the early 1990s, widespread anti-immigration backlash propelled the issue of migration control onto the legislative agendas of the German Bundestag and the U.S. Congress. In both countries, public debate was dominated by vociferous claims that the state had lost control over its borders: in Germany, calls for stricter regulation converged on the rapidly expanding number of asylum seekers, whereas in the United States, protests targeted the country's growing population of undocumented immigrants. Importantly, legislators in both contexts were exposed to strong pressures to enact restrictionist immigration reform.

This, however, is where the cross-national similarities end. Even though immigration control featured saliently in public debates in both countries – a condition that might lead us to expect corresponding legislative responsiveness (Soroka & Wlezien, 2004) – the outcome of subsequent reform initiatives differed substantially. In Germany, legislators enacted public interest policies – statutes that corresponded to the substantive concerns of the public and that provided for the appropriate measures to achieve their goals. By categorically excluding migrants from certain countries from access to the system, German parliamentarians enacted a drastic measure – even clearing the hurdle of constitutional reform – that succeeded in lowering the number of asylum seekers and defusing widespread anti-immigrant backlash. The U.S. Congress, by contrast, while passing one of the most draconian immigration control bills in the nation's history, eschewed exactly those policy provisions that would have best met public demands for reducing illegal immigration: measures designed to deter the employment of undocumented immigrants. Confronted with opposition by organized interests to stricter worksite enforcement, legislators decided to settle for what I call private interest policies. Skirting measures that would impose concentrated costs on private interests, Congress instead increased control provisions that allowed for credit-claiming without alienating organized constituencies.