Hungary has not faced a refugee crisis this large since the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s, when Hungarian authorities had to handle close to 50,000 asylum seekers in 1991 alone. While right now the number of people coming to Hungary is much higher, most of them want only to travel through the country; during the Yugoslav Wars, most refugees wished to stay in Hungary to escape the war. This is an important distinction to make: given that most migrants want only to travel through Hungary, and the ratio of immigrants who want to settle down in Hungary is marginal, the issue Hungary faces is not an immigration problem in the classical sense but is not one that will not be solved automatically, and could increase in the future.

 

Read the complete article written by Péter KREKÓ and Attila JUHÁSZ on the website of Foreign Affairs.