Across The New Frontier

NICK CORNISH for TIME

Clothes lie discarded on a beach near Otranto after asylum seekers have swum ashore

A hard line on immigration looks like a political no-brainer these days. Politicians throughout Europe have read the writing on the wall and think they've discerned there a populist, anti-immigrant scrawl. Jean-Marie Le Pen's exploitation of the issue helped put him into the second round of France's presidential elections, though it wasn't compelling enough to prevent the withering of the National Front in this month's legislative elections. In the Netherlands, the late Pim Fortuyn's straight-talking take on the issue propelled his party into a still-nascent government coalition. The new Danish government rode to power astride that issue last fall, and polls...

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