Amid growing concerns about the political impact of immigration, various countries on both sides of the Atlantic this week adopted new measures to crack down on asylum seekers.
Panama has begun U.S.-funded deportation flights as part of an agreement with the U.S. to stem the flow of hundreds of thousands of people who pass through the country each year on their way to the U.S. border. Immigration is now the second most important issue for U.S. voters.
Brazil has announced it will crack down on asylum-seekers after it found that many were simply using the country as a springboard to travel north to the United States or Canada.
Overshadowing all of this is the fact that about 40% of Venezuelans have said they might leave the country if Nicolas Maduro remains in power, exacerbating what is already the world's largest refugee crisis.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Britain, reeling from recent anti-immigration violence, has promised a series of new measures to stop asylum seekers from entering, staying and working. Immigration is now a top issue for British voters for the first time since the 2016 European migrant crisis that helped drive Britain's exit from the EU.
And Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán followed in the footsteps of Texas Governor Greg Abbott by promising one-way tickets to Brussels to any illegal immigrants arriving in Hungary, a threat that came after he fined Budapest for its strict border policies that do not comply with common EU rules.
