Hungary’s new laws make criminals of migrants

The six men knelt in the morning sunshine, their noses almost touching the wire fence that encircles warehouses in the village of Morahalom.

A solitary Hungarian policeman stood nearby, outnumbered but showing no fear of having any trouble from these men, all very poor and a very long way from home, their slim shoulders leaden with fatigue and resignation.

They had somehow breached the four-metre- high, 175km-long barrier that Hungary completed on Monday night along its frontier with Serbia, or perhaps they had been hiding for some time in the border forest migrants call the "jungle".

Now they would be put in the back of the approaching police van and charged under new laws introduced yesterday, which could see them jailed for entering Hungary illegally or for damaging the razor wire-clad border fence.

More likely, they would be sent back to Serbia, and be among the first of potentially tens or even hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers whom Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban vowed to block, after 200,000 migrants crossed his country in recent months.

Hungary is in the vanguard of mostly central European states that reject a plan for all European Union members to take a quota of refugees, under proposals suggested by Germany – which is ready to accept a million refugees this year.

Potential threat

Mr Orban has been heavily criticised by more liberal EU leaders, and rights groups for claiming that most migrants arriving in

Europe

are seeking prosperity rather than safety and represent a potential threat to the continent’s security and traditional Christian identity.

He was the first to call the migration crisis primarily an issue of security and border control, and now he watches with satisfaction as Germany, Austria and Slovakia reimpose frontier checks and other EU states consider following suit.

On country roads by the Hungary-Serbia border yesterday, small groups of migrants clambered from the bushes and walked slowly along the grass verge, unsure which way to go.

How will migrants continue to western Europe? Hungary’s laws now turn them into criminals, so they must seek covert ways to travel.

Locals know where demand will meet supply – in the busy petrol stations and truck stops of this corner of Hungary, where people smugglers await those “lucky” migrants whom the police don’t catch.