The French government body that handles asylum requests, for example, reported 85,244 requests in 2016, up 6.5 percent from the previous year. In Britain itself, the debate over deportation has been somewhat subsumed by the louder discussion over immigrants from Europe who helped spur Britain’s vote in June to leave the European Union. Asylum requests totaled 123,000 last year — a steep rise from 26,000 in 2013, when Italy was seen more as a transit country for migrants heading north to Central Europe. In 2015, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, was the first European Union leader to resist mass migration. Migrants would instead be held in much more restricted conditions, possibly in violation of European Union law and international conventions on refugees.

Source: New York Times February 23, 2017 22:42 UTC