During the campaign several opposition politicians who don't shy away from propagating fake news and regularly conflate guest workers and illegal immigrants kept mentioning that over a million emigrants have left Hungary, Piroska Szalai, a researcher at the Institute of Economy and Competitiveness at the Ludovika National University of Public Service, wrote in an article for Mandiner
The expert said that the public data put out by both the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH) and Eurostat show annual data on Hungary's emigration and immigration from 2001 and 1995 respectively. These reveal a net positive balance in international migration since 1995, i.e. there has never been a year since 1995 in which more people left the country than moved in.
The KSH differentiates between the movement of Hungarian and foreign citizens, and even further divides immigrant Hungarian citizens into Hungarian-born returnees and foreign-born newcomers. According to the official data, a total of less than one million people have emigrated from Hungary since 1995 (606,000 is the 1995-2023 interim total), and this includes foreigners who came to Hungary to work or study for a few years and returned to their home country when their assignment expired,
Piroska Szalai wrote, adding that more than a million people have immigrated to our country since 1995, some have stayed here and others never intended to and left after their reason for being here ended. A significant portion of the influx of foreign immigrants is attributed to the high number of companies operating in Hungary with a majority of foreign decision-makers and mixed foreign and Hungarian workers.
