Abstract. The paper summarizes immigration policy models in Germany, France, the UK, the USA and Canada in response to the growing immigration flows since the second half of the XXth century. By contrast with “traditional” nation states of Western Europe, the USA and Canada have developed on the basis of the settler colonies having melted immigrants of various ethnic and cultural origins. The USA and Canada have been prioritizing immigration as a factor of their national development. Although public culture in these immigration states has been developing on some specific cultural patterns, American and Canadian societies have not generated the concepts and perceptions of an “ethno-cultural” core of the nation as such. One of the reasons for current integration issues in the West is the struggle of immigrants for their collective cultural rights in host societies. Differences in political culture between Western European states and immigration states (the USA and Canada in this case) determine the gap in the institutionalization of collective rights for immigrants and, correspondingly, specific character of integration issues. Transition to the pluralistic model of national integration in the USA and Canada is determined by the following factors. First, due to mass immigration, there emerged liberalization of immigration policies. Secondly, in the post-war period, political cultures in liberal democracies witnessed a pronounced republican tendency, due to the ideological influence generated in times of The African-American Civil Rights Movement.