Hungary campaigns to boost birth rate, and eliminate immigration

As various European countries turn to skilled migrant labour to make up for declining birth rates leading to shrinking workforces, Hungary is heading in a completely different direction.

Mothers having four or more children in Hungary are now set to receive a new package of subsidies, including lifetime income tax exemption,  Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced on 11 February 2019. The seven-point subsidies package was presented during the State of Nation speech as a solution to increasing the Hungarian population without accepting migrants.

“We don’t just want number, we want Hungarian babies,” PM Orban said. There are now fewer than 10 million people living in Hungary, with low birth rates and high levels of migration to other countries in western Europe. Current projections show that Hungary’s population is likely to shrink by 15 percent by 2050.   

With the European Parliament elections on the horizon, PM Orban is campaigning to gain more votes in order create anti-immigrant coalition. He said irregular immigration would create “mixed populations” in countries that Muslims eventually would dominate and Christians quickly would become a minority, reported news agency Business Insider.

He urged the European citizens to not vote for pro-immigrant parties which are seeking “new internationalism” and instead back anti-immigrant ones for the sake of defending European traditions and Christianity.

Previously, PM Orban called immigrants flooding into European countries “Muslim Invaders” and called for an anti-immigration coalition inside European bodies. “Immigration brings increased crime, especially crimes against women, and lets the virus of terrorism,” he said.

At the height of the migrant surge in 2015, over 390,000 migrants, many from the Middle East and Afghanistan, attempted to enter Hungary via Croatia and Serbia on their way to wealthier EU member countries in the north and west. To stem the flow, Budapest ordered a 500-kilometre long wall, covering a quarter of the country’s border. Hungary claimed that the fence has helped to cut the inflow of migrants by 99.7 per cent.

TMP – 14/02/2019

Photo: Kristijan Dimoski / Shutterstock. Photo caption: A family riding bicycles in Budapest, Hungary.