Conflicting conservative views on migration
July 20th, 2015A commentator in the main pro-government newspaper says Hungary must slow down the current wave of migration and screen the migrants, while a Catholic economist thinks that humaneness and empathy are more important than anything else.
In Napi Gazdaság, János Csontos agrees with the government in considering a fence along Hungary’s southern borders an inevitable provisional solution. He criticises opposition politicians who compare the fence to the Iron Curtain, since this time nobody wants to prevent people from using the official border crossings. He lambasts the European Union for its continued failure to offer a solution, while some member countries, like the Czech Republic, try and select the most educated refugees and volunteer to host them. In order to achieve a similar position, Hungary should be able to receive the migrants at border crossings. In fact those who are real refugees and have nothing to hide should simply ask for asylum at the Hungarian border without crossing into Hungary illegally. He thinks Budapest liberals who accuse the government of insensitivity should receive migrants in their own flats. The government is trying to protect Hungary in the same way as they try to protect their own homes, Csontos writes.
In Heti Válasz (print version), Sarolta Laura Baritz, an economist and Dominican nun cautions against condemning migrants as violent offenders. She acknowledges that the several hundred thousand strong immigration wave causes severe legal, infrastructural and security problems in Europe. The Papal Council for Justice and Peace calls on European states to show more compassion, until the main cause is solved and peace and security are restored in the migrants’ countries of origin. Immigrants, she explains, are not a faceless mass of enemies entering our territory. But they will become one if we receive them in this spirit.