Last year was remarkable in terms of migration. There were nine times as many asylum seekers in 2013 as in the previous year – said Zsuzsanna Végh, Director General of the Hungarian Office of Immigration and Nationality.
Last year was remarkable in terms of migration. There were nine times as many asylum seekers in 2013 as in the previous year – said Zsuzsanna Végh, Director General of the Hungarian Office of Immigration and Nationality.
The office registered 18,900 applications for asylum in 2013, while only 2157 in 2012, a level of growth that had been without precedent since the establishment of the Office of Immigration and Nationality in 2000.
By June 2013 there had already been twice as many asylum seekers as in the whole of 2012. In 2013, there were as many applications for asylum as in the previous 6 years altogether. Hungary has become one of the refugee reception countries, in the classical sense of the word, the Director General said.
The reason behind the sudden rise in the number of asylum seekers is the decrease of security in source countries such as Syria or Afghanistan. In case of Kosovo, financial-existential problems have forced many people to leave the country.
Ms Végh added: in 2013, there were 23 thousand people who crossed the Southern borders of Hungary illegally and 85 percent of them applied for refugee protection at the Office of Immigration and Nationality. And although a significant number of the applications were not justifiable, the legal procedures had to be conducted nevertheless.
Most of the illegal migrants arrived from Kosovo – more than 6 thousand people, 32 percent of the total number of asylum seekers. Many refugees also arrived from Afghanistan, Algeria and Syria. Asylum seekers from these four countries represent up to 70 percent of the illegal migrants in Hungary.
Last year, there were twice as many underage children with no adult accompaniment arriving in the country as in the previous year. Due to the fact that their personal freedom cannot be restricted, human traffickers tend to carry them straight on to other EU member states.
The reception facilities were filled quickly, in 2012 there were 545 people accommodated daily. The three-fold increase in 2013 made it necessary to open new establishments, for which more than HUF 1 billion was provided as extra support to the Office of Immigration and Nationality.
With regard to legal migration, the Director General said that on the last day of 2013 there were 221,604 people in the country who had residence permits valid for more than 3 months. The number of EU citizens who applied for residence permits decreased by 14 percent, to 18 thousand.
The number of third country foreigners seeking residence permits rose by 8-9 percent to 37,547 – most of them arriving from China, America, Iran, Ukraine and Serbia.
According to Minister of State László Felkai of the Ministry of Interior, the refugee issue is far from being settled within the European Union, but due to the upcoming elections it will not be clear until this autumn whether the EU is ready to look at the issue from a different perspective. Until then, a further rise in the number of migrants can be expected, Mr. Felkai said.
(Ministry of Interior)
