THE WALLS THAT DIVIDE
President Trump wants to build a wall. Some European nations already have.
KUBEKHAZA, Hungary – As mayor of this Hungarian village where tens of thousands of migrants marched toward northern Europe, Robert Molnar has some sympathy for his country’s decision to build a fence on the border with Serbia. ❚ But Molnar has a message for Americans: Don’t let President Trump build his wall with Mexico.
“We have a serious immigration issue. Europe is not prepared. It is important to protect our sovereignty. I accept that,” Molnar, 47, said in his office in Kubekhaza, a short distance from the point where the boundaries of Hungary, Romania and Serbia meet.
“It serves no purpose other than political theater. It should come down. I would urge Americans to examine whether Trump’s wall will really make them safer or better off,” Molnar said.
He pointed out that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a staunch anti-immigration nationalist who easily won a third term, ordered $1 billion in electrified fencing equipped with cameras and heat sensors to keep out migrants.
Orban referred to refugees as “Muslim invaders” and vowed during the election campaign to protect Hungary from the “rust” of Muslim immigration.
“Orban decided we needed this wall. And that is the only reason we have it,” Molnar said. “If migrants want to come to Kubekhaza, for example, all they have to do is simply walk here from (neighboring) Romania, where there is no wall.”
Since the start of Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015, at least 800 miles of fences have been erected by Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Slovenia and others — a swift and concrete reaction as more than 1.8 million people flooded Europe, fleeing war zones from Afghanistan to Syria.
The total length of the European
“I would urge Americans to examine whether Trump’s wall will really make them safer or better off.”
Robert Molnar Mayor of Kubekhaza, Hungary
barriers is about 40% of the span of the
2,000-mile wall Trump wants built between the USA and Mexico to keep out undocumented immigrants. About
700 miles of U.S. fencing exists.
A visit to Hungary and Slovenia — the two countries with the region’s largest expanse of fences — revealed that those who live and work near these barriers often find they serve little purpose and say they can be psychologically damaging. It’s a verdict with significance for Americans as Trump pushes his signature campaign promise to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.
Orban’s 20-foot-high, barbed-wire fence, which stretches for 200 miles, was built to block migrants from streaming through Hungary on their way to northern Europe from Greece. It ends at the border with Romania to the northeast.
‘Like a monument’
Molnar said the barrier will affect a generation of students.
“We run a summer camp in this village, but more and more parents say their kids are scared to come here because of our proximity to the fence,” the mayor said.
“They think Kubekhaza is a dangerous place because of the migrants. Yet we have no migrants here anymore, and the wall is not doing anything. It’s like a monument,” he said.
About 300 miles west of Kubekhaza, in Slovenia, hotel owner Peter Madronic copes with the nearby fence his nation built on the border with Croatia.
Madronic, 28, runs a guesthouse in a river valley popular with kayakers and mountain bikers. Slovenia preserved his hotel’s access to the Kolpa River — the natural border between Slovenia and Croatia — by building the fence around his land instead of directly next to the river. Doing that means his hotel is technically not in Slovenia nor in Croatia, less than 100 feet away.
“For some, it seems we are no longer in Slovenia, that we have been ‘fenced out,’ ” Madronic said, eyeing the 12-foottall chain-link fence. “Thankfully, the fence is not so ugly.” He said the barrier has not hurt his business.
Hungary cut migrants on its borders by nearly 100% since 2015, along with a deal made by Turkey and the European Union to stem the flow of migrants reaching the continent.
In the first three months of 2018, only 635 migrants were detected in the western Balkans — Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia — trying to reach European countries farther north, according to the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations-affiliated group.
Last year, 200,000 migrants landed in Europe, way down from the nearly 2 million in 2015, according to Frontex, the EU border agency.
Scientists worry about the possible long-term effect the barriers could have on wildlife, such as brown bears, which can migrate across as many as nine countries in Europe. “The fences are a real threat to them,” said biologist Djuro Huber at the University of Zagreb in Croatia who studies wildlife on the Slovenian-Croatian border.
Some residents of the region were baffled by inconsistencies and gaping holes along the borders.
“I don’t know why there are so many gaps in the fence,” Marija Grdesic, 32, said while guarding a narrow, wooden bridge that separates Croatia from Slovenia.
“Perhaps it’s so local people can still reach the river to swim here,” she said, motioning toward the Kolpa River.
Tractors instead?
Emile Farran, 77, who works on a vineyard in Slovenia’s Istria region, pointed to an opening the length of a football field in the 15-foot-high fence topped with barbed wire intended to secure Slovenia’s border with Croatia.
“There is no need for this thing,” he said. “This is not a place where strangers ever pass. If the government really wants to help people like me, it should think about buying us some new tractors.”
These fences built in Europe differ from the one Trump wants along the Mexican border, said Ema Zuagen, 65, a retired physical therapist having coffee in Sevnica, Slovenia, the hometown of first lady Melania Trump.
“The thing about Trump’s wall is that it would keep out Mexicans and South Americans, who are mostly Catholic,” said Zuagen, who approves of the barriers. “Whereas our walls are keeping out immigrants who are mostly Islamic. There is a big difference.”