The United States - facing massive controversy over immigration - received more asylum requests than any other developed nation in 2017, overtaking Germany, the OECD said in a report published Wednesday. Asylum requests went up 26 percent in the US to 330,000 last year, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said in its annual International Migration Outlook.
Germany, which had topped the ranking since 2013, meanwhile saw a 73 percent drop in applications to 198,000 as the massive influx to Europe across the Mediterranean has slowed, the report said. The report was released as President Donald Trump faces a cacophony of criticism over his administration's practice of separating migrant children from their parents on the US-Mexico border. "The refugee crisis has heightened concerns in the public opinion about the potential benefits of migration," the OECD's labour director Stefano Scarpetta wrote in the report.
If countries want to work together better on migration and protect refugees, "these concerns must be addressed."
Trump has promised a "zero tolerance" approach to immigration, vowing that America will not become a "migrant camp".
But the policy of separating families has sparked a huge uproar, with Democrats who have visited detention facilities describing crying Central American children held in cage-like conditions.
The United Nations has slammed the separation practice as unconscionable, while Amnesty International blasted it as "nothing short of torture."
In Europe, which has seen hundreds of thousands of migrants arrive on flimsy boats since 2015, the OECD warned governments needed to find jobs for young refugees or risk fuelling anti-immigrant sentiment over their failure to integrate.
Young men with little education make up a disproportionate number of the roughly four million people who have claimed asylum in Europe since 2014, the Paris-based rich nations' club said.