> I’m genuinely asking because looking at the map, neither Hungary nor Poland are the first stop for a middle eastern refugee, and I have no idea where the statement of infiltrator from ISIS comes from because I haven’t heard of an uptick of terrorism in either country.

People are more reluctant to let immigrants from too foreign culture in, e.g. Poland let in > 1M of Ukrainian immigrants (they are from similar culture as Poland) during last few years. Those assimilate easily.

Also, people are afraid of the unknown. You force that on them, they will object -> vote for those that will block that. There is no way around that.

This happens more in places that are more religious and for example Poland is, if you let in people from different (also religious) culture you create a clash.

I think it would be easier for Czech, where there are few religious citizens.

As for terrorists. People watch TV -> see that ISIS is cutting heads -> EU wants to import people from exact same region into your country. Many people objected to that, even those less nationalist.

they will answer that they don't have terror attacks precisely because they don't let terrorists in (unlike those pesky french and germans)

Poland is very homogeneous regarding race, church. Most, who vote for populists, weren’t abroad, or hadn’t opportunity to meet other cultures really. Everything they know come from tv, or social media, and right-wing uses social media extensively: Facebook groups, or YouTube videos to scare them, you know, when one falls into Recommended black hole there is no turning back. Rapes, burning cars etc. Even government TV likes to remind from time to time what a “problem” refugees are. So it is mostly by showing everything negative about Muslims in Europe that is ever been able to find.