{"id":165568,"date":"2018-05-30T03:35:15","date_gmt":"2018-05-30T07:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=165568"},"modified":"2018-05-30T03:35:15","modified_gmt":"2018-05-30T07:35:15","slug":"hungarian-govt-looks-to-constitution-to-keep-immigrants-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/05\/30\/hungarian-govt-looks-to-constitution-to-keep-immigrants-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Hungarian govt looks to Constitution to keep immigrants out"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The law submitted to parliament would make it a criminal offence punishable by up to a year in prison to promote or facilitate \u201cillegal migration.\u201d Dubbed \u201cStop Soros\u201d by the government, it partly targets civic groups, some supported by Hungarian-American financier George Soros, which offer legal and other aid to asylum-seekers. (Photo By: Thommy’s works, Public Domain)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BUDAPEST, Hungary – The Hungarian government proposed constitutional amendments and a new law Tuesday that are intended to prevent Hungary \u201dfrom becoming an immigrant country\u201d by further tightening its policies on accepting refugees and asylum-seekers.<\/p>\n

The law submitted to parliament would make it a criminal offence punishable by up to a year in prison to promote or facilitate \u201cillegal migration.\u201d Dubbed \u201cStop Soros\u201d by the government, it partly targets civic groups, some supported by Hungarian-American financier George Soros, which offer legal and other aid to asylum-seekers.<\/p>\n

The Hungarian Helsinki Committee, one of the groups most vilified by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s anti-immigration government, said its activities were lawful and called the proposal \u201cunacceptable in a democratic state.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill \u201cthreatens to lock up and imprison those who behave legally in the defence of Hungary’s human rights obligations,\u201d the group said.<\/p>\n

The constitutional amendments put forward add language saying that \u201cforeign populations cannot be settled in Hungary\u201d and would place additional limits on eligibility for asylum.<\/p>\n

For example, people who entered Hungary from a country where they were not persecuted or threatened with persecution would be ineligible.<\/p>\n

Since most asylum-seekers from the Middle East and Asia reach Hungary from Serbia, they would be unlikely to meet the new requirement.<\/p>\n

The United Nations refugee agency called on the government to withdraw the legislation.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeking asylum is a fundamental human right. It is not a crime,\u201d Pascale Moreau, director of the UNHCR’s Europe office, said. \u201cWe are particularly concerned that the government is targeting those who, in a purely humanitarian role, help people who are seeking asylum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Orban’s Fidesz party won a two-thirds majority in an April election, giving it the freedom to modify the Hungarian Constitution unchallenged. Orban, who won his third consecutive term and fourth overall, campaigned almost exclusively on fighting immigration, vowing to defend Hungary’s Christian culture from immigrants who are predominantly Muslims.<\/p>\n

Hungary built razor-wire fences on its southern borders with Serbia and Croatia in 2015 after some 400,000 people passed through the country on their way to western destinations like Germany and the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

In the past year, the government has conducted repeated ad campaigns against Soros, accusing him of supporting indiscriminate migration to Europe.<\/p>\n

Speaking Tuesday in Paris, Soros again rejected the Hungarian government’s charges.<\/p>\n

\u201cViktor Orban based his re-election campaign on falsely accusing me of planning to flood Europe, Hungary included, with Muslim refugees,\u201d Soros said at a meeting of the European Council On Foreign Relations. \u201cHe is now posing as the defender of his version of a Christian Europe that is challenging the values on which the European Union was founded.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BUDAPEST, Hungary – The Hungarian government proposed constitutional amendments and a new law Tuesday that are intended to prevent Hungary …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":159505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[51472,51470,51471],"class_list":["post-165568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","tag-george-soros","tag-hungarian-government","tag-hungarian-helsinki-committee","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}