The Premier flagged a Serbian-Hungarian cabinet meeting scheduled for early July for the issues to be discussed. “It is not right that they send over the refugees; they should be stopped while still on Serbian territory,” he said.

Reception centres should be set up at the EU’s cost but outside its borders and member states should be allowed to decide whether they receive entrants. Schengen borders are “valuable” which should not be touched “just yet” but outer borders should be reinforced, he said. We are not able to provide jobs to immigrants, the Prime Minister pinned down.

Viktor Orbán said the government’s billboard campaign on immigration targets human traffickers and “economic migrants”, giving them the message that they should stay away from Hungary.

Most people agree that immigration is dangerous, but the political forces that represent “unrealistic” theories are louder, he said, adding that the anti-billboard actions of liberal intellectuals and politicians are only the voices of a loud, but small minority.” “If left-wing parties were in power today, Hungary would be full of migrants”, he said, adding that “this issue could be managed properly only by a patriotic government.”

Meanwhile left-leaning daily Népszabadság said that a total of 3,991 police officers guard Hungary’s Schengen border stretching 1,100 km.

Citing figures by the national police, the newspaper said that police declined to release the number of police officers guarding the 164 km Hungarian-Serbian border, which is considered the most critical stretch. It said that more than 700 fewer police guard the borders than before the border guards were merged into the police.

The paper also said that at the end of last year some 14,000 foreigners from non-European Union countries held valid work permits in Hungary. Citing national employment office figures, Népszabadság said that a year earlier, the number stood at 19,000 and ten years earlier, at the end of 2003, it was 57,000. The significant drop from 2003 resulted from Hungary’s EU accession in the following year, but no explanation has been found for the drop in 2014, the paper added.

MTI photo: Szilárd Koszticsák

Source: hungarytoday.hu

Republished with permission