During her first visit to Texas, Hungarian Minister of Justice Judit Varga sat down with The Dallas Express to talk about how Hungary has confronted the issues of border security, showing parallels to the current situation in America.
Minister Varga has served in the position since 2019 and will be resigning from the role at the end of this month to participate more actively in the upcoming elections.
“I will be chairing the European Affairs Committee in the National Assembly, because I’m an MP in the Hungarian parliament, and probably I will be heading the list for the European elections of our conservative party, the Fidesz,” Varga explained.
“This gives me greater freedom to speak my mind, to try to convince as many citizens across Europe as possible,” she continued. “This is the way forward.”
Varga has been a vocal advocate for protecting Hungary’s territorial sovereignty and the nation’s traditional pro-family values. Her trip to Texas was prompted by a desire “to enhance synergies between conservative politics all over the continents.”
“We need to make friendships, we need to get to know each other and find common ground,” she said. “Maybe there might be differences when it comes to details, but when it comes to the real principles, then I think we can find common ground.”
“We believe in family, we believe in national sovereignty, we don’t think that mass illegal migration is a good thing for our future, et cetera,” Varga explained, noting some of the similarities she saw between Hungary and Texas politics.
Looking specifically at the ongoing immigration crisis in America, Minister Varga drew parallels between how Hungary struggles against the European Union establishment in Brussels and Texas’ touch-and-go relationship with Washington, D.C.
“We respect others, and we also expect respect for our national policy, which is supported by a huge majority of the voters, so this is the basis of how we implement this very strong border,” she noted. “But we are slapped in the face in the center of the European Union.”
“We are fighting back those massive illegal migrants because we are not only protecting Hungarian borders but also the European border, which is the so-called Schengen border,” Varga explained.
The Schengen area refers to the EU nations that have functionally “abolished their internal borders” so that “citizens and many non-EU nationals staying legally in the EU can freely circulate without being subjected to border checks,” according to the European Commission.
“We have to be very strict about who we let into this paradise,” the minister said. “We are protecting their interest and our border, which is very expensive in cost — 1.8 billion Euros — which was not reimbursed.”
Varga drew a distinction between people who are genuine asylum seekers and those who are merely economic migrants, suggesting that the current system of immigrant laws being pursued by the EU is unsuitable for the current situation.
“The European asylum and migration legal framework is outdated. It is not well designed for the 21st-century mass migration,” she suggested. It was designed at the end of the last century, and this kind of challenge was not the same which exists today.”
Hungary has been in a multi-year legal battle against the EU, which is attempting to force the nation to open its border more than it already has. She criticized the current legal establishment run by liberal progressives and associated NGOs for pushing open border ideology.
“If you play by their rules, you will lose,” Varga added. “So what can we do? We only trust democracy because we are responsible for our citizens, first and foremost, and this is not in our citizens’ interest.”
“We have a referendum saying no to mass migration. We have public consultation of our citizens,” she continued. “And this is the key to our success, that we are standing by the people.”
Concluding on the issue of mass migration, Varga said, “I just would like to add, we are human beings. We are Christians. We have hearts, and we know there’s a real asylum situation and refugee situation.”
“Since the outbreak of the war, we let in more than 1.5 million real asylum seekers from Ukraine,” the minister noted. “We provide them all the healthcare and every kind of treatment, accommodation, travel, logistical possibilities, whatever they need.”
“So there is a real difference,” Varga insisted, reemphasizing the distinction between true asylum seekers and economic opportunists. On the southern borders, where not refugees but economic migrants typically come. “They are walking through safe countries. … They are not persecuted anywhere, and I don’t think it’s a human right to wake up anywhere in the world and point at a country on the map and say, ‘I have a human right to live there.’” “So last year, we alone stopped 270,000 illegal migrants.”
She also highlighted that the history of Hungary, stretching back centuries, has been one of welcoming people into the culture.
“We were always the defenders of Europe because we are the corridor, the Carpathian Basin, and this kind of 21st-century economic migration is, in our view, detrimental to the culture because the rhythm and the pace and the masses are too big to integrate,” Varga said.
“Throughout the centuries, Hungary managed to integrate many nations … they came, and then they became a part of our nation,” she explained. “They speak the Hungarian language; they abide by the Christian rules.”
The pro-border security position “is not against humanity, this is not against anyone, it’s not discrimination, it is just a very rational instinct to know who you are and who you want to be in a hundred years or the next thousand years.”
The tension between Brussels and Hungary mirrors somewhat the ongoing struggle between Washington, DC, and Texas over security at our southern border. As Gov. Greg Abbott continually tries new strategies to stop the historic levels of illegal entry, legal challenges and federal intervention stand in the way, as reported by The Dallas Express.
Similarly, while Abbott has bused more than 25,000 migrants to self-declared sanctuary cities across the country, the Biden administration has spent millions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize those jurisdictions, further enabling the crisis.
