Szilárd VAJDA's blog

Hungary. A small country in the middle of Europe populated with less people than Big Apple, and definitely weird ones, once they start speaking their weird language not related to anybody else. Nobody gets us, not even our european partners. We are just some crazy people using our last name first, and vice versa. We are good at Maths and making gulyas, and stoping the Turks when they wanted to invade Europe, and many other things [...] I left out the palinka, I should have not!

We were cut off for 45 years due to our Russian friends, and somehow not even today we have not yet opened completely to the changes. Indeed, we got into EU, we managed even to become a Schengen state, but still many things are missing from our culture. Tolerance and acceptance somehow did not reached us. Once the Berlin Wall disappeared many Hungarians immigrated to wealthier states such as Germany, Austria, etc. while the Hungarians outside the current borders moved to Hungary. Of course, they look the same, they speak the same, they share the same history/culture/values, therefor integration was easy and economically convenient at that time. Now the minorities in the surrounding countries (Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia), suffer big time, but who cares? Nobody! It just happened!

And now we have a few hundred/thousand immigrants on our land, and we started to panic. They are different, they look different, they have different culture, they don't speak Hungarian and they ask for asylum and somehow we do not handle the situation. Plain and simple. We can't handle it, or we do not want to handle it. Meanwhile, we have TV footages with poor people invading the train stations, living in miserable conditions, and despite the fact that many of us have never seen or met an immigrant, we started blaming them for our personal political and economical failure. It is the easy way to start hatred and spurn. It is a political game and it works just perfectly. 

You are right. They are coming, but some barbed wire fence won't stop them. They are looking for a safe place, and apparently Europe seems to be a safe haven, and I can not blame anybody for seeking a place in there. It is just instinct. However, due to our awkward language and really bad economical situation we have nobody wants to stay here! They want to leave for Germany and some other wealthy countries like UK, Sweden, etc. Meanwhile, we should help them and learn to accept others. We are not good at that just yet. We have work to do more on this account. 

And in such blurry situations there are many irregularities and illegal things - I would say, and we should fight hard against them, allowing in the country only those who came trough official channels, but rejecting somebody based only on some journal columns or video footages would be completely inappropriate and inhuman. 

What we can do? Learn! Learn to be tolerant, learn to be human, and learn that there are other people who have different culture, different religion, different language, but still humans. Once we change our perception and instead of letting emotions drive our judgment, we start relying  on facts, we will be able to handle properly this new situation. The Germans managed with the Turks, the French also managed with North African people coming from former colonies, same the Brits with Indian and Pakistani nationals. We should be able to manage our own immigrants and open up, listen to them, help them because we are humans as they are. We should change our perception!