The history of migration policy in Europe and United States between the late XIX and the early XX century offers several issues of comparison with the current EU regulation. The paper analyzes, with a historical-philosophical approach, these two experiences with the main focus on the rights of migrants, whose extension has been determined by the legislations of both leaving and incoming countries, where the inclusion or exclusion strategies have been influenced by the opposite visions of the jus migrandi.
After World War II the progress of human rights towards a full recognition both in state constitutions and in international treaties seemed to have achieved once and for all an un-negotiable and uncompressible standard. In the EU area the human rights legislation plays a crucial role, but at the same time the effort to create a new European identity has reinforced an exclusion process of migrants and a denial of their rights. New (or old?) political fears have once again moved the frontiers of the human rights back and EU citizenship risks to become the strategy of legal discrimination against migrants.