Hungary Passes “Stop Soros” Laws

Hungary built long fences along its southern borders in late 2015 to stop the flood of migrants fleeing war-torn Syria.

Between January and November 2015 an estimated 1.5 million people are estimated to have crossed the EU external borders illegally.

As the crisis became untenable that year, European Union Chief Jean Claude-Juncker made an impassioned plea for Europe to take in their share of refugees saying, “To me, it is clear the Member States where most refugees first arrive─at the moment, these are Italy, Greece and Hungary─cannot be left alone to cope with this challenge.”

In 2016, there were 29,432 applications for asylum in Hungary.  Of that number 22,835 were men, 6599 were women and 8551 were children.

According to a published report from EuroNews, Germany was asked to grant asylum to 27,536 migrants and France to take in 19,714.

Wikipedia lists the number of terror attacks in Germany at four since 2015 and France has been stricken a total of five times by terrorists.  Each attack was officially listed as committed by radical Islamists.

On September 6, 2017 the European Union Court of Justice dismissed a challenge by Slovakia and Hungary over the mandatory quota program.

#ECJ dismisses Slovakia’s and Hungary’s challenge to Council’s migrant relocation decision https://t.co/mgbSrzXMp1

— EU Court of Justice (@EUCourtPress) September 6, 2017

The mandatory quota system was approved in September 2015 by a majority of EU member states, but was rejected by Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary.  Poland supported the plan, but later strongly opposed it when the Law and Justice Party came to power.  

After attending a meeting of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, Germany Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced Hungary would refuse to take in refugees declaring he is following the will of his people─a deliberate jab at Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel─whose open-door policy has come under fire.

“Most refugees,” said Orbán, “come to Europe not because they are fleeing dangerous conditions at home but because they want to take advantage of economic opportunities. As such, they shouldn’t be considered ‘refugees’ so much as ‘Muslim invaders.’”

In a published report today in DailyMail-UK, “Hungary has introduced new laws which it says will penalize groups that receive foreign funding to aid illegal immigration.”

“The government has dubbed the new legislation the 'Stop Soros' laws, because it blames Hungarian-American billionaire and philanthropist George Soros for Europe's migration challenges─in part because of his funding of groups that support the rights of refugees.”

“The ‘Stop Soros’ laws include mandatory registration of some non-government organizations that 'support illegal immigration'”, officials say. 

“A 25% tax would be imposed on foreign donations that NGOs collect, and activists could face restraining orders that preclude them from approaching the EU's external borders in Hungary. Furthermore third-country nationals could also be subject to a restraining order anywhere within the country.”

“Exact details are not clear because the bills will only be published and submitted for public debate on Thursday. But pro-government media reported that they could result in a ban on Soros─who has U.S. and Hungarian citizenship─from entering the country.”

UPDATE:  Welcome readers of iOTWReport.  Once again, we’ve been the recipient of MJA’s linky-love.  Thank you so much.