Why Migrants Don’t Want to Stay in Hungary
Many of the migrants and asylum seekers who once were desperate to get to Hungary now seem desperate to get out.
One group of Syrian refugees climbed over and under a razor wire fence — with small children and an elderly woman — in order to evade the Hungarian police and thereby have a chance at quickly passing through the country.
Most seem to want to move on to other European countries, especially Germany and those in Scandinavia.
Their determination to keep moving raises a question: What’s so bad about staying in Hungary?
When asked, the migrants now stuck at a train station in Budapest say that they put Hungary in much the same category as Macedonia and Serbia, the Balkan countries they passed through on their journey. They see Hungary as having a thin veneer of prosperity, but being fundamentally relatively poor and still developing. And Greece, though developed, is in economic crisis.
They want to live in a truly developed land of opportunity.
It is common to hear the migrants here say that being in Hungary has been the worst experience they have had on their journey. But take this with a grain of salt. When the migrants were in Greece, Macedonia and Serbia, they talked about how painful that was as well.
In some ways, passing through each of those countries is like a difficult and yet hopeful pregnancy. And perhaps like women giving birth, the migrants have to forget the pain of overcoming the last hurdle, or they will never be able to do it again.
“The fact is, we don’t want to stay in Hungary,” said Azad Darwish, 23, a law school graduate camped out with a group of young friends on the plaza in front of the Keleti train station in Budapest.
They have train tickets to Germany, with the ultimate destination of Hamburg, and were supposed to leave Tuesday morning. But the police removed them from the train they were on before it left the station, telling them not to worry, they would be able to board a later one.
Now it is Wednesday night, and they are still waiting, in suspense about whether they will be allowed to leave Hungary. They have an open ticket valid for 15 days, but their hopes are rapidly fading.
Asked why not stay here, Mr. Darwish said: “If we stay in Hungary there is no work. We can’t study. The language is very strange, and they’re not helping refugees.”
If they were wary of Hungary before, now that they have been stopped at the train station and forced to sleep on the concrete sidewalk, they are even more disillusioned about their prospects here.
Shaded by a concrete barrier, the group sat on a delicate, persimmon-colored blanket, embossed with gold flowers. Like many Syrians, they maintained a sense of decorum by removing their shoes before sitting on their blanket.
Yes, perhaps they could rent hotel rooms in Budapest, the friends said. But at this point, if they spent their money on hotels, they would have none left to move on. They said they resented being called eyesores and being blamed for trash. This was not their true nature, they said.
There were clues that they had left middle-class lives back in Syria. Mr. Darwish was a law graduate. Another, Imad Ziyad, 23, wore a pair of stylish black and white houndstooth checked shorts and sleek eyeglasses; he was a dental student. Another, Ahmad Ali, 24, had been an interior design worker. They spoke good English.
The young men had tried to sneak across the border from Serbia, but they had been caught by the Hungarian police and taken to a camp where they were fingerprinted. In the camp, they said, all they were given to eat was a piece of bread, a can of sardines and a tiny jar of marmalade. Camp security officers were selling cigarettes at what the Syrians considered extortionary prices of 15 euros a package.
“We’ve been through all these countries, this one is definitely the worst,” Mr. Darwish said, sounding like a lawyer. “It is supposed to be an E.U. country, but it has broken every single tenet they had. Greece is such a poor country, and it treated us better.”
If they have the chance, they will keep moving.