Hungary quietly imports workers to cope with the labour crisis

Satwinder Singh caused quite a stir when he arrived in Sarud, a Hungarian village, four years ago. He was among a handful of guest workers who had been brought over from India to work at a dairy farm that was struggling with a labour shortage. Locals were not welcoming.

Bloomberg reported that Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban heads and also communicates an anti-immigrant vanguard inside the European Union, which he claims protects from “invaders” and immigrants. The Hungarian government raised walls from the ground and protects them with the most modern technology and police guards.

“He’s erected barbed wire fences to keep out refugees and withhold food from some housed in detention centres. U.S. President Donald Trump says he’s like a twin brother,” wrote the article.

But Hungary and other nations with an anti-immigrant attitude are quietly opening a back door to foreigners and immigrants. Central and Eastern Europe are among the fastest-growing parts of the European Union, and with the departure of millions of workers to Europe’s richer West, labour forces cannot meet companies’ demands. In recent years, governments were willing to allow in white, Christian workers from places such as Ukraine and Belarus, but those people have already left these countries. Now, to solve the problem of the labour shortage, migrants from other corners of the world have begun to arrive.

“The labour force of the 21 countries between the Baltic Sea and the Balkans will shrink by more than a quarter by 2050, lopping over 1 percentage point a year off economic growth, according to the International Monetary Fund.”

Last year, Hungary gave 49,500 people permission to work in the country, and these workers are not from the European Union. Among the arriving people, the number of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Mongol people have increased in the last few years. Just like Hungary, many other European countries do the same to solve the severe problem of the labour shortage.

Also, “governments have attempted to lift birth rates by offering generous tax benefits and other perks for would-be parents, yet at a demography conference in Budapest this month, Orban, Vucic, and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis conceded they hadn’t found the magic formula.”

The article mentioned that Hungary’s “Orbán-controlled media dishes out a daily diet of anti-immigrant news, and the government maintains a state of emergency over mass immigration that, in reality, has plunged.” The Hungarian propaganda machine is still working, emphasising the fact that growing multiculturalism would be beneficial for the nation and for the economy as well in the country.

Source: www.bloomberg.com