The backlash throughout Europe against immigration and migrants continues unabated. The recent anti-migrant demonstrations in Germany attest to this fact. So do the elections in Sweden yesterday, where demands to halt immigration and disputes about the alleged connection between migrants and crime proved to be the key defining questions in the electoral campaign.

But the reality is that the biggest immigration wave currently affecting Europe remains a silent one that few European politicians discuss: It is the mass movement of people from eastern Europe to the western part of the continent, an exodus of monumental proportions which will transform Europe in irrevocable ways and scar one part of the continent with social and economic problems for decades to come.