With immigrants trying to illegally enter the EU pouring into Spain, illegal immigration continues to be a hot-button issue in Europe. Last year, Spain gave amnesty to over 600,000 undocumented foreigners. Not surprisingly, Spain now faces a problem it cannot solve alone. The Spanish government called for a meeting in Madrid at the end of September to address the issue. According to the Associated Press,

Spain called the meeting amid a relentless wave of arrivals by destitute Africans to its Canary Islands off the coast of west Africa—more than 24,000 this year, about five times the number for all of 2005. Italy has caught more than 12,000 trying to reach Sicily.The countries’ calls for more help from Brussels to stem the tide have largely fallen on deaf ears. Germany, Austria and other countries say Spain invited the avalanche by decreeing the amnesty.

A common immigration policy is no simple issue. In fact, when the EU constitution was rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands, some claimed immigration policy was the reason. More than that though, the idea of what it means to be European was at issue.

The Scottish Sunday Heraldsaid French voters “claimed that they had rejected the EU constitution because they did not want any more cheap Polish plumbers or were alarmed about an influx of Turkish immigrants.”

The Economistsaid the French and Dutch EU referenda showed “growing hostility around Europe to further enlargement of the EU—and, specifically, to the idea of taking in poor, big and Muslim Turkey.”

There are already proposals designed to prevent Muslim immigration to some European countries. As the clash between Islam and Catholicism grows hotter, expect those politicians who support a strong immigration policy—like France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Bavaria’s Edmund Stoiber—to be the ones who succeed in the rising European Union.