Migrants have posed a challenge to Schengen from its very inception

ITALY'S recent decree making it easier to expel illegal immigrants has produced storms of protest and some strange political alliances in Rome. Dissident members of the ex-communist Democratic Party of the Left have teamed up with some Roman Catholic hierarchs to oppose the crack-down. The dissidents' colleagues have found common cause with the federalist Northern League and the League's arch-rivals, the post-fascist National Alliance: they support the bill. Erminio Boso, one of the League's senators, wants the government to take "footprints" of immigrants, says the police who have to deal with them should use rubber bullets and thinks expelled immigrants should leave on military aircraft because they smell and might rape the stewardesses on commercial airlines.