Our balance sheet has been positive for thirty years. Immigration and emigration map. Written by Piroska Szalai.

Are even the demographic indicators driven by politics? Kossuth Radio asked me the other day, so I collected the latest data. In the campaign, several opposition fake news politicians mentioned more than one million emigrants, and even confusing guest workers with illegal immigrants is a daily practice for them. Immigration to and from Hungary

First of all, let's clarify the concepts!

According to the statistics, a Hungarian citizen who (actually or according to plans) leaves Hungary for at least 12 months and a foreign citizen with registration or a residence or settlement permit who leaves Hungary in a given year without the intention of returning are considered emigrants from Hungary. Among them are those whose license has expired and did not apply for a new license, as well as those whose license was invalidated due to revocation.

An immigrant to Hungary is the exact opposite of an emigrant, i.e. a Hungarian citizen who has lived/born abroad and came to Hungary with the intention of settling, as well as someone who has returned from a stay abroad of at least 12 months and a foreign citizen who enters Hungary in a given year, sa has a residence or settlement permit or registration certificate in accordance with applicable laws.

The change in the population of a given country consists of two factors, one is the international migration balance, i.e. the difference between the number of emigrants and emigrants, and the other is natural reproduction or decline, which is the difference between the number of deaths and births.

We should know that the last time the number of births was higher than the number of deaths was in 1980, i.e. since 1981, for more than forty years, our country has suffered a natural weight loss.

Among the public data of KSH, we can find annual data on emigration and immigration from Hungary from 2001, and Eurostat from 1995. According to them, our international migration balance has been positive since 1995, i.e. there was no year in our country in which more people emigrated than moved to us.

Among the regime change countries, only Slovakia can say the same.

Romania and Latvia had a negative balance until 2021, Bulgaria until 2019, Lithuania until 2018, Poland until 2017, Estonia until 2014 and even the Czech Republic until 2012.

The KSH separates the data into Hungarian and foreign citizens, and further divides immigrant Hungarian citizens into returnees born in Hungary and immigrants born abroad. The graph shows that since 2016, more Hungarian citizens have moved home than emigrated. And among the immigrant Hungarian citizens, there is a higher proportion of those who emigrated before and are now returning than those born abroad. Before 2016, the positive migration balance was due to foreigners moving to us.

In summary, a total of one million people have not emigrated from Hungary since 1995 (606,000 people in the period 1995-2023).

and this includes those foreigners who came to our country for a few years to work or study, and as soon as their assignment ended, they returned to their country. In addition, since 1995, more than one million people have immigrated to our country (1,119,000 people), some of whom stayed here, and some of whom left the country after the reason for moving had expired. A significant part of the immigration of foreigners can be explained by the fact that in our country there is a high number of companies with a majority of foreign decision-making, where foreign and Hungarian employees work in a mix.

Due to the free movement of workers within the European Union, we cannot limit the number of EU citizens who want to work in our country, and therefore also their immigration.

7 years after our accession, the labor market had to be liberalized in all older EU countries, which is why the number of emigrants from our country increased after 2011, which also does not mean only those who leave abroad with the final intention.

The entire article can be read on Mandine!

Featured image source: medicalnewstoday.com