[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Civil war has broken out in Europe over Germany's new plans to introduce strict border controls - with populist leaders giving their support for similar measures.
Yesterday Germany's government presented rigorous rules on asylum that would see more people turned away at its frontiers, a day after it announced it would start carrying out controls on all its land borders.
While Germany risks alienating the Left with its hardened stance on migration, Dutch politician Geert Wilders vowed to copy the plan for the Netherlands. And Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán shared his support for the measures, welcoming Germany to the so-called #StopMigration club.
The centre-Left German government has also begun exploring strict measures on immigration, including a plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing, in the wake of high arrivals of migrants from the Middle East and Ukraine.
The so-called 'traffic light coalition' looks to shore up support from voters after the far-right AfD made gains earlier this month as concerns grow over a spate of isolated Islamist attacks in recent months.
Mr Wilders, who triumphed in the 2023 Dutch general election to see his far-right PVV party become the largest in the House of Representatives, backed the policy proposal. He has struggled to gain support within the Netherlands and stepped back from his bid for prime minister in March, citing a lack of support from potential coalition partners, but has found a receptive audience through his staunch position on immigration.
He expressed support for a similar policy to Germany's within the Netherlands, writing: 'If Germany can do it, why can't we? As far as I'm concerned: the sooner, the better.'
Both the far-Right PVV and the Right-wing Liberal VDD parties have shown interest in greater border checks in line with those recently announced by Germany. Migration minister Majolein Faber has already asked military police to begin preparations.
'In the meantime, we are talking to Germany about working together,' she said on social media.
Hungary, surrounded by mountains, has brought in strict policies to limit migration under Orbán - a move the EU has pushed back on, fining Hungary 200 million euros (£170mn) in June after it failed to make changes. Under current legislation, people can only submit requests for asylum outside Hungary's borders, at its embassies in neighbouring Serbia or Ukraine. Those who try to cross the border are routinely pushed back.
Post-election polls suggest asylum and migration are the two key issues for Germans nationwide, and that support for the party is genuine - rather than a protest vote - piling pressure on the coalition government to act.
But Germany's neighbours have already criticised plans to introduce temporary controls into the passport-free Schengen zone.
Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, said that Germany was acting unilaterally and unfairly in its 'unacceptable' plans that risked breaking European law. He said Germany had introduced a 'de facto suspension of the Schengen agreement on a large scale' in its bid to confront what German interior minister Nancy Faeser called 'irregular migration'.
But Austria has shown support for the checks. In a televised debate ahead of the parliamentary election on September 29, Chancellor Karl Nehammer told national broadcaster ORF that if Germany introduced measures to send more immigrants back across their shared border, Austria would do the same, sending more people eastwards towards the Balkans.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged to 'examine' the case for an overseas asylum processing centre in November last year. He insisted any scheme would be 'in compliance with the Geneva Convention on Refugees and the European Convention on Human Rights.'
But Scholz also recognised plans would be fraught with 'a whole series of legal questions'.
A spokesperson for the Rwandan government welcomed the suggestion, saying they were 'happy to work with anyone on this who shared their desire to find a long-term solution to the migration issue'.
"Give us money"
But the move risks fracturing Germany's 'traffic light coalition'. Within Germany, the Greens, centre-left SPD and liberal FDP fiercely oppose the Rwanda proposals as being both illegal and costly.
'Even if we went ahead with it, it would mean the whole asylum system in Germany – and other European Union countries – would be dependent on one dictator in Rwanda,' Erik Marquardt, an MEP with the Green Party, told i.
'Basically, the EU would be in the hands of [President Paul] Kagame.'
'The problem is not migration. It's Islamism,' Mr Marquardt told i.
'Our approach is to try to find solutions. And the idea that there is one easy solution through just one measure, like sending people to Rwanda, is simply wrong.
'It is basically populism, and it was the same in the UK; the British government decided to put this populism into laws, and it was a big waste of money.'
Poland, while critical of the border checks, shares the claim that Russia has weaponised migration, encouraging asylum seekers to cross over into central Europe with attempted illegal border crossings from Belarus on the rise.
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