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I'm not sure if the US has an equiv. problem, but a major immigration issue facing Britain right now is the disolution of borders within the EU, which effectively means that any person from an EU State (many of which are incredibly poor) are able to settle permanently in any other EU country. Needless to say its the richer EU states offering the best welfare programmes that are encouraging most immigrants. This is having a massive effect on various (primarily blue collar) industries, where immigrants are prepared to work for a lower wage, put in more hours, and seem uninterested in seeking Union membership. In the 1970s, annual immigration into Britain reached 27,000. It is now estimated to be approx 290,000. This doesn't include the estimated 50,000 illegal immigrants that enter Britain each year, and doesn't even begin to tackle the high amount of asylum seekers annuallyapplying for citizenship - of which around 60% have so far had their applications rejected but only 1 in 4 are believed to have left. And in case these figures seem low, remember that in terms of land mass, Britain is roughly the size of Florida and is according to official world population sources 12 times more overcrowded than the US.
Furthermore, arguments that this level of immigration benefits the UK economy are debatable, with some estimates calculating a deficit in GDP, others a modest surpluss of approx 4p per head per week. However the big issue in Britain does not seem to be about GDP, but rather decreases in wage rates, the rise of a more casual workforce as well as the trend towards inner city segregation amongst ethnic groups.
Leaving aside asylum seekers who I believe can't morally be capped in terms of numbers entering the country, I think that it's essential that the amount of purely economic (and at this point entirely legal) immigrants entering Britain needs to be capped at a more realistic annual figure.
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