The terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, linked to the Islamic State radicals have significantly changed the course of domestic politics in France and the United States. Both the National Front leader Marine Le Pen and the Republican front-runner Donald Trump are drawing on popular fears of terrorism to surge ahead in their respective presidential campaigns.

Le Pen charges that the French government has abandoned "our own" poor while offering all sorts of assistance to illegal immigrants, which is "thievery." Trump has demanded "a total and complete shutdown" of U.S. borders to all Muslim immigrants.

Such rhetoric has resonated with the public and is shifting conservative political parties further to the right. The French center-right Republican Party has taken up an anti-immigration line that differs very little from Le Pen's. Jeb Bush, a centrist within the Republican Party, has changed his stance on immigration: He now supports accepting Syrian refugees only if they are Christian.