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PM Orbán promised Hungarian citizenship to guest workers in Hungary: misinterpretation or a sharp turnaround?
In a recently published interview, the prime minister said that third-country guest workers who behave well in Hungary, work properly, and obey the law “may even apply for citizenship”. Is this a sharp shift from his anti-immigration stance?
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In almost every European country, the population would shrink without immigration
Hungary’s population has been declining almost continuously since the 1980s. Between 2015 and 2025, the country lost more than 300,000 people, with the population falling from 9.8 million to 9.5 million. By contrast, in 1983 more than 10.7 million people lived in Hungary.
The Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH) estimates that by 2070 the population will fall to just 7.2 million, with a much larger share being elderly and economically inactive. This will require a shrinking active workforce to support them through old-age pensions.
This trend is, of course, not unique to Hungary; it is a pan-European issue and, indeed, a challenge facing the entire developed world. Once a certain level of economic development is reached, and aside from a few local communities with specific characteristics, couples generally have fewer children, while marriages and stable partnerships decline sharply.
Several European governments have responded by inviting migrants; Germany, for instance, has done so over the past decade. France has largely maintained a fertility rate above 2 by accepting substantial migrant flows from its former colonies for decades.
The Hungarian government has, until now, firmly rejected this approach, arguing that family policy measures and state support for child-bearing can achieve a demographic turnaround. Unfortunately, the figures do not support this claim.
Despite everything: birth rates plummet dramatically in Hungary
Following the introduction of the subsidised housing loan scheme for families (CSOK), both marriages and the number of children planned increased. In 2010, at the time of the change of government, the fertility rate stood at 1.25; by the early 2020s, it had risen to 1.61. While this was still insufficient to replace the population, it was a significant improvement.
Moreover, the trend continued upward until 2021. The subsequent downturn was partly due to the coronavirus pandemic, partly to the economic crisis that followed, and partly to economic stagnation in recent years. Experts also note that many of the children planned as a result of family policy measures (such as favourable housing loans and tax incentives) had already been born by the end of the 2010s.
In 2024, the fertility rate fell to 1.39, and in the first half of this year it dropped further to just 1.27 — almost the same level as at the time of the government change in 2010. Looking at the overall trend, even taking massive emigration into account, achieving the replacement rate of 2.1 now appears impossible.
Can guest workers now obtain Hungarian citizenship?
A reader of Válasz Online noticed that the Hungarian prime minister recently made a surprising statement in an interview with the German newspaper Bild regarding guest workers arriving in Hungary.
An excellent Hungarian film was made on this subject in 2016 “Az Allampolgar” (The Citizen) about a black man who tries to obtain citizenship in Hungary which made the rounds of international film festivals. The bottom-line is that it is almost impossible to get.
Good.
Hungary is not a book club, that you join or leave at your whim.
We also welcomed foreigner once upon a time. After the Turkish invasion, when Hungary had a severly reduced population. We invited the Czechs to Upper Hugnary, the Moldavs and Wallachians to the East of Hungary, we let the Serbs and Croats stay in Hungary who fled from the Islamic hordes.
Two centuries later, France, England and America decided to give our homeland to the immigrants.
So why would you be surprised, that we don’t want that again?
Not many people want to immigrate to Hungary but they want to immigrate from Hungary to Austria, Canada, the US., and every Western country. The talent is leaving and that is problem number one. I know many talented Hungarians living in Canada: a lot of physicians, an electrical engineer who helped design a nuclear power plant, an agricultural engineer who assisted farms all over southern Ontario, a successful entreprenurial mechanical engineer who assists companies all over North America. These immigrants in turn have successful children who propel the economy including my own daughter who works for one of the biggest Silicon Valley AI companies. They helped Canada succeed. We took Hungary’s talent and built our country with them and other immigrants. Unfortunately, Hungary will never succeed if it doesn’t reward the talented people it has or welcome new talent from abroad. Still, you will always have unpolluted Hungarian culture.