Illegal Migration to Hungary

Hungary has been experiencing a huge influx of illegal migration in the past half a year with an average of 1,000 people a day coming in the last weeks. Majority of them are arriving to Hungary through the common border with Serbia. To stop them, Hungary will erect a fence and monitor it with drones and cameras. A truly Hungarian solution.

 

Why I created this infographics?

 

I simply wanted to attract attention to problems Hungary is facing with regard to illegal migration. I also wanted to summarize the scattered data and put them into perspective.

 

 

When gathering the data, I came across some interesting websites:

1. This is a BBC role-play story – you make your decisions on the migration route from Syria to Europe – try it out.
2. Helsinki committee created a leaflet for asylum seekers coming to Hungary. It contains quite some useful information. Read it here.
3. EUROSTAT has a lot of resources and statistics covering not only illegal migration, but also the age and gender share. A website worth browsing through!
4. Hungarian office for Immigration and Nationality has a comprehensive website. Check it out here.

 

Did you know that…

 

Hungary has the largest number of asylum applications as a share of total population?

 

Greece and Italy at the spotlight

 

The European Union was trying to address this migration increase mainly in the maritime countries of Greece and Italy in the past months. The operation Triton has been in place and without doubt it managed to save a lot of lives. But why the focus has been only on these 2 countries, while the illegal migration to Hungary has been sky rocket high? Probably it is more photogenic to board a boat and sail off to the boisterous waves of the Mediterranean sea than crawling in the woods near Subotica or Kanjiža (Serbian cities by Hungarian border known as crossing places).

 

Transit Greece, no worries

 

But not to be a blame monster, the European Union has now promised to Hungary a helping hand (details in the infographics). One thing, which is striking about this, is that many of the people actually transited Greece. Were they not registered there? Is Greece so broke to have border patrol?

 

International Organization for Migration

 

When searching for migration data to make this infographics, I found a local Budapest office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). I immediately checked out the careers section and got surprised that they are actually not searching for neither temporary staff nor an intern.

More interestingly, it seems that they have gone for a long holiday. Apparently, either they know very well that there is no demand for Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration or they do not consider their job to be a mission. But why?

This is what they have on the main page in 4 different languages:

IOM’s latest Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) identified 3,087,372 internally displaced persons (514,562 families) in Iraq from January 2014 through 4 June 2015. The displaced are dispersed across all of Iraq’s 18 governorates.

What does that mean? There are people on the go that were relocated to be in a safer place. That also means that some of the family may have decided to look for a better place outside of Iraq. They experienced bombings and shootings and were simply too scared to stay. So, probably more will  come and it is not a fence that would solve the problem.

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Resources and further reading:

 

• Hungary Today
• Hungary matters
• articles mentioned already in the main text