“Hungary could see the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people, and this many people could change the demographic balance within a decade”, the Minister in charge of the Prime Minister’s Office said in Kiszombor.

At the street forum organised in the 4200-inhabitant Csongrád County town, János Lázár said the people living there have first-hand experience of migration in view of the fact that hundreds of thousands of people had crossed the border illegally just a few kilometres away.

“148 thousand of them registered in Europe here for the first time, and on the basis of this some countries think they have the right to send these people back here, but Hungary has nowhere to send them on to”, he added.

The politician, who is also the area’s Member of Parliament, stressed to the crowd of some one hundred people that the Government has no other means at its disposal to prevent this except that the people collectively reject it.

“The referendum affects everyone equally irrespective of what political force they happen to support, because what they must decide is who should live in this country”, the Minister said, adding that “It is not all the same whether Hungary remains Hungarian or changes permanently”.

“Those who decline to take part in the referendum are giving up their own homeland”, because if few people participate in the referendum then it will be impossible to prevent people from Africa or the Middle East from being settled in Hungary”, Mr. Lázár said.

“People living near the border also have personal experience of the consequences of forced relocation: following the Treaty of Trianon the ethnic make-up of Hungarian villages allocated to Romania did not change until 1947, but in the fifties and sixties large numbers of Romanians were relocated to these villages and by today these Hungarian settlements have disappeared or have been shrunk to a small minority”, the MP said.

In reply to a question, Mr. Lázár explained that mandatory relocation would be very different from what people have experienced so far. “We would no longer just have to house people temporarily until their asylum requests are processed, but accept them permanently and provide them with homes, social welfare and healthcare, as well as schools and nursery schools for their children. Since the country’s capacities are finite, as a result of this there would either be less to go around for people who receive such services and benefits, or people would have to pay more taxes”, the Minister said.

In reaction to suggestions that mandatory relocation would only mean the arrival of a few thousand people, Mr. Lázár declared that the question isn’t how many people will be arriving initially, but whether or not the process begins at all. “If we open the borders it will be regarded as an invitation and millions of people will set out for Europe and Hungary”, he said.

(MTI)