(MONTEVIDEO) - A tough new EU law jailing illegal immigrants for up to 18 months before deportation has triggered outrage across Latin America, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatening to cut off oil exports to Europe.

"Our petroleum should not go to these European countries" that apply the new laws, Chavez told a press conference in Caracas.

Just as European nations could return illegal immigrants to their country of origin, Latin American countries could also decide "the return of European investments," Chavez said.

"At least in Venezuela," he said. "We don't need them here."

Chavez said his government would "review the investments that they (the Europeans) have here to see if we can also apply a 'return directive.'"

The European Union adopted tough new rules Wednesday on illegal immigrants, allowing detention for up to 18 months prior to expulsion, and angering human rights groups.

The measures, which could come into force in 2010, passed their final political hurdle at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where they were endorsed by 367 votes to 206 with 109 abstentions.

They will obligate authorities in 27 EU member nations to choose between issuing residency or other permits to the estimated half a million people entering illegally each year or returning them to their countries of origin.

Those denied residency have two options: "return" home or face "removal."

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa, a leftist leader like Chavez, vowed a united front to combat what he called the "hatred initiative."

"We hope to issue a joint response with the countries of Latin America" to what he called the EU's "aggression."

Bolivia's socialist President Evo Morales called on Africa to join Latin America in an effort to repeal laws that "attack people's lives and rights."

"We are going to have an international campaign to try to reverse the situation," said Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president.

"Brazil, a country which has welcomed millions of immigrants and their descendants, now integrated harmoniously, deplores a decision that helps create a negative perception of immigration," Brazil's Foreign Ministry complained in a statement.

In Uruguay, the Senate voted to declare the EU law "a violation of human rights, particularly the right to travel freely internationally."

Peru's top diplomat Jose Garcia Belaunde called the measure "discriminatory" and not in the European tradition.

The head of the Washington-based Organization of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza, called the EU measure "repressive."

"It's a paradox that while we negotiate important trade agreements and speak of strategic alliances, unilateral measures are passed ... that treat illegal immigrants like criminals, without talks or negotiations with Latin American governments," he said.

Carlos Alvarez, the president of the Mercosur trade bloc grouping Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay, said the new measure was "discriminatory" and "openly violates human rights."

Alvarez said the EU "should remember the past, when millions of Europeans came to our countries victims of hunger, war, injustice and totalitarian regimes, and were assimilated with no problems whatsoever."

Currently nine EU states set no limit at all on the amount of time that people can be detained. Many others have far shorter custody times than the 18 months the so-called "return directive" will introduce.

The new measures will form a major component of a sweeping new EU "immigration pact" that France is preparing to unveil in July when it takes over the bloc's rotating presidency for six months.

For Wilfredo Ardito, director of the Peruvian human rights group Aprodeh, the new law looked like a hypocritical effort to "make it illegal to be poor."

"It seems sort of two-faced for European countries to talk about fighting poverty, and then treat migrant workers like criminals," he said.

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