ALEXANDROUPOLIS, Greece — At the train station here, an unshaven man with a weary look leaned against the brick wall of a building, taking in the morning sun.

He said that his name was Zulifoar Baht; that he was 38, from Pakistan; and that his train for Athens would not arrive until midafternoon. So there was nothing to do but wait, along with a dozen or so other illegal immigrants who had finally made it into Greece from Turkey, crossing one of the most porous borders in Europe.

The 126-mile border between Turkey, which is not in the European Union, and Greece, which is, has become the back door to the European Union, making member countries ever more resentful as a tide of immigrants from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa continues to grow. Frontex, the European Union’s border policing agency, estimated that a vast majority of the crossings in 2011 occurred at the Greece-Turkey border. Last year, Frontex said, more than 55,000 people crossed the border, a 17 percent rise from the year before.

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After illegally crossing the border from Turkey over the Evros River, Liakot, an immigrant from Bangladesh, stood with his only possessions at the train station in Alexandroupoli, Greece. He held a piece of paper with the phone number of a contact in Greece. It turned out to be a false lead.