Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, in an interview with public radio on Friday, said the issue regarding migration was not whether one would come across migrants in Budapest in the next 20-30 years but the fact that once migrants were allowed in, they could not be moved out. “And this means that our children, our grandchildren and several generations that follow will live in a world that will be unpleasant, uncertain, full or terrorist acts, crime and mini ghettos like Gaza,” he said, adding that this could still be prevented. “Accepting illegal migrants and their presence in the country would lead to the people of that country not being able to live in security, peace or prosperity,” he said, adding that the issue required forging a broad international consensus.
Hungary’s “pro-migration” leftist opposition and Jobbik-Conservatives were undermining efforts to forge that broad consensus, he added. “Accepting migrants would lead to not being able to live in safety, wellbeing and peace in Hungary, either,” he said.
This, he said, was already the situation in several western European countries that were once colonisers, and the 2015 wave of migration added to that, when even further migrants were allowed in. “In some countries, the local residents think that the country will never be the same as it was when they were born there,” he added. Orbán said change was needed in Brussels regarding a migration policy that had “ruined the western member states” and which should not be forced on Hungary. The prime minister said: “We don’t want mini Gazas in the districts of Budapest, terrorist attacks or gang wars.” He said Hungarians should be thankful that they should not have to think about migration rules in a country where 10-20% of the residents were already migrants. Hungary has a “tolerance offer” which is being communicated to the Germans, the French and the people in Brussels. “Hungary does not want to tell them how they go about their business but asks one thing: they should tolerate that Hungary acts differently,” Orbán said.
But, he said, people in Brussels wanted a unified policy on migration and to impose the same state of affairs that pertained in the western half of Europe across the entire bloc. “They want to send their migrants here and force Hungary to build migrant ghettos, and they want to authorise Brussels to be able to send here any number of migrants when a state of emergency is cited,” he said. Orbán said this issue would be the focus of a “big fight” in the coming months as well as a key issue in next year’s European Parliament elections.
Referring to a planned government public opinion survey, the prime minister said that if the government received confirmation of its policies in a National Consultation, then the Hungarian government would be able to “hold out”.