A professor at Syracuse University College of Law, authored an odious piece published earlier this week at Project Syndicate, a platform closely affiliated to pro-migration, Soros interests. Appearing under the title “Trump’s Role ModeI,” it hypothesizes that US President Donald Trump and his team of advisers have “learned a great deal from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán”.
If the author, David M. Driesen, had stopped there, we would have considered it a compliment. But this is Project Syndicate and Planet Soros, after all. According to this scholar, President Trump borrowed from PM Orbán “racist immigration policies” and tactics on “how to destroy democracy”. These make for some pretty steep accusations, so a few facts and supporting arguments would be in order. We get none, of course.
Instead we get the usual nonsense. Take this line, for example, about the alleged “demonization of immigrants”. In 2015, the negative effects of the migration crisis became very clear for Hungarians, as nearly half a million migrants crossed the border of Hungary entering Schengen Europe – the vast majority of them illegally and not a few of them helped by human traffickers. There was no “demonization”; the sight of illegal migrants camping outside Budapest’s Keleti Pályaudvar railway station was an everyday reality.
That summer, we even had a violent mob of migrants attacking our common border with Serbia. In the incident that came to be known as the “Battle of Röszke”, the mostly male migrants attempted to break through the border barrier, threw rocks and injured uniformed officers guarding the border. It was ugly. Not quite the picture Driesen would have you imagine about an “exhausted and frustrated” group of Syrian asylum seekers.
Professor Driesen then goes on to argue that PM Orbán and President Trump both claim that “immigrants fleeing extreme violence and poverty are engaged in terrorism.” This is a deliberate distortion of what the prime minster has been saying for years. Refugees fleeing persecution and war may be granted entry to Hungary, in accord with international conventions, once their asylum requests have been properly requested and granted.
There is proof, however, of a direct link between immigration and terrorism. By allowing masses of people in Europe, we are making it easier for terrorists to enter the Schengen Area and make use of the free, borderless movement on the continent. Following the terrorist attacks in France and Belgium in 2015, a number of prominent news outlets devoted coverage to the fact that the migrant crisis and Europe’s porous borders were exploited by Islamic radicals to move militants in and out of Europe. Those are facts that have been forgotten on Planet Soros.
But once we are here, thinking about what President Trump and PM Orbán have in common, one thing does stand out, although it does not appeal to the liberal, pro-migration cabal.
They both bring a voice of reason to the debate about migration. The Orbán Government and the Trump Administration are critical of positions that hold that migration is some kind of right, and instead we insist that the security and prosperity of our own citizens takes first priority.