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Crackdowns against asylum-seekers gain momentum in Europe and the Americas

August 22, 2024
Alex Kliment
Asylum seekers wait outside the foreign office in Brussels, Belgium.
Asylum seekers wait outside the foreign office in Brussels, Belgium.
REUTERS/Yves Herman

On both sides of the Atlantic, a range of countries adopted new measures to clamp down on asylum-seekers this week, amid rising concern about the political impacts of immigration.

Panama began US-funded deportation flights as part of an agreement with Washington to stem the flow of hundreds of thousands of people who transit the country annually en route to the US border. Immigration is the number-two top issue for US voters right now.

Brazil announced it will crack down on layovers who request asylum, after finding that many of them simply use refuge in Brazil as a jumping-off point for northward journeys to the US or Canada.

Hanging over all of this: Some 40% of Venezuelans say they may leave the country if Nicolas Maduro remains in power. Their exodus would exacerbate what is already the world’s largest external refugee crisis.

Across the pond, the UK, reeling from recent anti-immigrant violence, pledged a raft of new measures to stop asylum-seekers from coming, staying, or working in the country. Immigration is now the top issue for UK voters — the first time since the European immigration crisis of 2016, which helped fuel Brexit.

And Hungarian PM Viktor Orban took a page from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s book, promising one-way tickets to Brussels for undocumented migrants who arrive in Hungary. The threat comes after the EU fined Budapest for a strict border policy that is out of step with common EU rules.

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