Why Is Washington Targeting Hungary’s Legal Travelers?
Do legal visitors from Hungary really threaten the security of the U.S. more than millions of poorly vetted illegal immigrants?
By Viktor Marsai on August 28, 2023
The Biden administration introduced a new regulation during the summer of 2023: since it could not cope with the illegal immigration crisis on the southwest border of the United States, Washington is aiming to cut back legal arrivals from one of its NATO allies: Hungary.
On August 1, the U.S. embassy to Hungary announced that it is reducing the validity of the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) due to the Hungarian government’s “inaction to meet Visa Waiver Program Security Requirements.” No other participant of the forty-country program was affected. Then why Hungary?
According to the embassy’s official statement, Budapest’s simplified naturalization process granted Hungarian citizenship to nearly one million people between 2011 and 2020 without adequate security measures. Therefore, procedures for all Hungarian passport holders who want to benefit from the Visa Waiver Program have been modified: the validity of ESTA has been reduced from two years to one year. In addition, the validity of an ESTA for Hungarian passport holders has been limited to a single use. During the press conference, spokesman Matthew Miller stated that there were “criminals who had obtained Hungarian passports because the verification of the identity of those applying for Hungarian citizenship was not adequate prior to 2020.” Miller notably did not mention any specific case.
The argumentation of the State Department seems inconsistent. Firstly, during an ESTA application, Hungarian citizens born abroad were automatically rejected even before August, consequently having to go through the regular U.S. visa process. Secondly, the decision does not really stem the arrival of Hungarian citizens — and, according to the embassy’s argumentation, criminals — to the United States; it only limits the time of ESTA’s validity.
https://cis.org/Marsai/Why-Washington-Targeting-Hungarys-Legal-Travelers
