International Spokesman Zoltán Kovács has given an interview to Townhall about the country’s border fence system, its foreign aid efforts for Middle East Christians, and the recent Hungarian talks with Us Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Kovács said the fence Hungary built along the border with Serbia when the country was overwhelmed by illegal immigrants in 2015, is very effective.
“Since we’ve built the double fence system at the Hungarian border with Serbia at that border section we were able to reduce the number of illegal migrants to zero, basically zero,” he said. “The fence itself is just obviously one element of the solution because you have to man the fence and that means you need personnel on the ground and also the legal environment is very important so, as we usually maintain, it’s a threefold security measure we have at the spot and indeed it works.”
He pointed out that “back in 2015 over 400,000 people have crossed the Hungarian border.”
“We were not able to stop them because there was no fence and we were not much prepared as neither was Europe prepared actually for that and since then for the past almost four years by now we’ve been preparing ourselves in all respects,” he continued.
“We all fulfill our international duties,” he emphasized, “but fighting illegal migration is basically not possible without physical infrastructure and that is physical barriers at the borders today.”
Regarding the debate in the U.S. over a border wall, Kovács said Hungary tries to avoid “the domestic political debates of other countries and we most of the time abstain from giving advice but we can share our experience.”
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