It is more complicated than that. An EU country can't close its borders according to EU law. In fact, they're very fucking suspicious even if an EU country announces they start border checks. There is a system called the Dublin regulation, which states that an asylum seeker needs to apply for asylum on the FIRST EU country they come to. This often means Italy or Greece. However, Italy or Greece can't handle the amount of immigrants (who don't want to stay there to begin with), so they just let them through. Therefor they continue to countries where they have best benefits such as Germany, Sweden, Finland etc. Since they are let in the EU and not registered in the first country of entrance, the countries INSIDE of EU borders are in trouble, because according to all their treaties, they're not supposed to have border checks. Now, if it was up to me, we would do it anyway, and if it came to it, we would go to EU court and fight about our evil nationalistic tendencies. However, most of these fucking politicians don't even remember a time before EU and can't imagine such a thing where a country has borders and it would actually decide independently who moves over these borders.