Prior to Hungary’s decision to build a Southern border barrier fence, “more than 400,000 migrants from Muslim-majority nations had surged from Serbia and Croatia over Hungary’s border along the so-called Balkan route, which started in Greece. Most had no intention of staying in Hungary; they were bound for the more economically generous environs of Germany, France, and the Netherlands.”
These economic migrants were determined, and so began digging tunnels right after Hungary finished building its “barbed-wire-rimmed steel fence barrier along its southern border in 2015 to stop mass-migration from the Middle East.”
“Two hand-dug tunnels full of migrants” were discovered. “Both burrowed about 20 feet under the fence.”
Now they’re back with a vengeance:
Migrants trying to reach high-welfare northern European nations being frustrated by Hungary’s southern border fence are digging tunnels in a bid to cross undetected, a new tactic that has otherwise been seen on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Only five months ago, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán renewed his vow to protect Europe from renewed mass Muslim migration.
“The Hungarian authorities make every effort around the clock to detect and to apprehend illegal migrants in the vicinity of the border.” He added that the government was alert to the risk of migrants potentially spreading coronavirus.
Meanwhile, the UK under Boris Johnson has been supine in the face of a migrant “invasion.”
“Hungary Working Around the Clock to Stop ‘Mexican’ Style Illegal Migrant Tunnels Under Border Fence,” by Oliver JJ Lane, Breitbart, August 19, 2020:
Migrants trying to reach high-welfare northern European nations being frustrated by Hungary’s southern border fence are digging tunnels in a bid to cross undetected, a new tactic that has otherwise been seen on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The emerging phenomenon comes five years after the first peak of the Europe Migrant Crisis, when Hungary bucked the continent-wide trend of open borders by declaring itself closed to illegals. The nation sat on the most direct path into Europe from the Balkan route, and the creation of a fence directed the migratory stream onto a longer way around its territory. But as migration starts to rise again after a coronavirus-forced lull, illegals are on the move. They are not just going around Hungary’s border — they are attempting to go underneath it, with authorities discovering several tunnels.
When Hungary’s southern border fence was first completed in 2015, it was hailed for having reduced illegal crossings to pre-migrant crisis levels. This was no mean feat — in the space of less than one month, the number of illegals fell from up to 10,000 a day to just a dozen a day.
But the migrants travelling to Europe’s high-welfare, lax-border control states in the north remain determined and — perhaps even more importantly — so do the people smugglers, who make fortunes trading in human misery. Using tactics best known on the U.S.-Mexico border, or at Israel’s border, migrants are now attempting to tunnel under Hungary’s frontier and avoid the attention of police.
Several such tunnels have now been found this year, with the frequency of discoveries rising with time. Earlier this month it was revealed in Budapest freesheet Pesti Hirlap that some 18,000 illegals had tried to cross the Hungarian frontier this year so far. Hungarian authorities had arrested over 200 traffickers — the largest number since 2015, the year the fence was built.
Last week, another one of these tunnels was discovered….