PM Orbán on curbing immigration
January 14th, 2015Left-wing commentators join opposition politicians in condemning the Prime Minister for his comments that Hungary will not become a target destination for ‘economic migrants’. A right-wing blogger reminds them – and the US Chargé d’Affaires – of the Mexico-US border fence erected against illegal immigration.
On Index, András Földes thinks PM Viktor Orbán intends to prevent the radical Jobbik party profiting from the Charlie Hebdo massacre, as Marine Le Pen’s Front National has in France. This, he suggests, explains what he calls the Prime Minister’s ‘xenophobic’ overtones in his impromptu TV interview in Paris. (The PM said Hungary would not allow ‘economic migrants’ in and did not want to have a substantial, culturally different minority within its borders.) The commentator says there is already a significant and culturally different group of people in Hungary, namely the opponents of Mr Orbán’s policies, for they favour inclusion and believe that “comprehension is the solution”.
On Jobbegyenes, Gábor Balogh criticises US Chargé d’Affaires André Goodfriend’s latest twitter post, in which the diplomat briefly mentions (Hungary’s first king) Saint Stephen’s advice to his son about the ‘benefits of diversity’, in what Balogh believes is an obvious hint at PM Orbán’s statement about migrants. He finds the US diplomat guilty of hypocrisy, considering that the United States built a 1000 km long border fence to prevent Latinos from flowing into the United States. Along that wall, 5600 people have died during illegal attempts to cross the border over the past 15 years, he remarks, 45 times more than along the Berlin wall from 1961 to 1989.
Tags: immigration, Orbán, US