This is GPS, the Global Public Square. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Farid Zakaria.

Today on the program, the first lady of Ukraine, I talk to Olena Zalenska about that frequently forgotten side of war, the human toll.

How are Ukrainians dealing with the destruction of their cities and towns? How are they fighting winter's cold as the country struggles to pump out heat?

And can they ever return to life as normal?

Also, Brazil's January 8th and its stunning similarities to America's January 6th.

We'll dig into the attack on the capital in Brazil with reporter Mack Margogas.

And after California continued to be pummeled this week by rivers of rain, we'll explore the astronomical cost of climate change and wild weather that is already upon us.

But first, here's my take. This week, at a summit with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts, President Biden said that the Western hemisphere was experiencing unprecedented levels of migration.

Greater than any time in history. This is not hyperbole. There were 2.4 million apprehensions at America's southwestern border last fiscal year, which is about 600,000 higher than the prior year, the previous high.

These numbers are likely to get worse over time and not just in America.

The Western world faces a perfect storm regarding migration. Climate change is making equatorial regions far more prone to drought and disease, making farming and living there much more dangerous.

Poverty and political instability in these regions persists and post-bendemic problems have festered so people move toward the richer and more temperate north, Europe and America. But the scale of migration is creating problems both of politics and policy.

The politics is obvious. Right-wing populism from Sweden to the United States to Italy is almost always linked with fears of uncontrolled immigration. It's an issue that fuels associated anxieties about cultural, religion and race.

If Western leaders cannot properly address immigration, Western politics will continue to be consumed with populism for a long time to come.

The policy part is equally important. The waves of migration we are watching now are making a mockery of the system of asylum that has come into being over the last decades.

After World War II and in the wake of the Holocaust, countries vowed to welcome people who had legitimate fears for their lives, a body of international law developed that gave asylum seekers certain rights.

In recent years, however, millions of people have arrived at borders claiming asylum. While some of them might be genuinely victims of targeted persecution, most appear to be economic migrants, searching for a better life, fleeing poverty and disease. Some are victims of violence and gang warfare, but the same was shortly true of earlier waves of immigrants from southern Italy or Ireland.

For people seeking to come to the US or France, it's only rational to cross the border however they can and then claim asylum since they are more likely to be allowed in and have a chance to stay.

But these new waves have collapsed the distinction between asylum seekers and regular economic migrants.

President Biden deserves credit for making an important effort to address the problem. His recently released plan tries not to reward illegal border crossing and simultaneously expands an existing parole program to include Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua in addition to Venezuela.

He's been criticized from both the left and the right. In this particular case, at least this is a sign he's doing something right. In December, Rishi Sunak, the son of immigrants, announced a new policy for Britain that more directly acknowledges that the current asylum system is broken.

Emanuel Macron has also proposed some measures that try to manage migration into France along similar lines. The politics of immigration is treacherous. The American right has become almost completely opposed to immigration, having moved more sharply on this issue than any other that I can recall.

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