320,000 New Hungarian Citizens

  • 7 Mar 2013 10:40 AM
320,000 New Hungarian Citizens
The government has granted Hungarian citizenship to over 320,000 residents of other countries under its simplified nationalisation procedures in the past two years, Népszabadság reports, citing an official summary. Over 360,000 applications for citizenship were submitted. Deputy prime minister Zsolt Semjén said recently that only 1.5% of applications are rejected. The vast majority of those turned down do not speak Hungarian and a small number are rejected for public or national security considerations, according to the summary.

“It is our responsibility to see that agents or extremely crazy people are not granted Hungarian citizenship,” Semjén said.

By far the largest number of applications, 125,000, came from Romania. Another 39,000 applications were submitted in Serbia, 8,000 in Ukraine, 1,300 in the US, and over 800 in each of Canada and Israel.

Source: Hungary Around the Clock

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