Péter Magyar, the Tisza Party leader topping every independent poll, has unleashed a blistering attack on Hungary’s guest workers. While Viktor Orbán’s government has merely capped and slashed their numbers, Magyar wants them all shipped home—no exceptions—and no more hires. But hang on: how on earth would Hungary’s economy keep ticking without them?
Guest workers: limited numbers
Orbán’s team has long hammered home the message: without these foreign hands, labour-hungry sectors like manufacturing and carmaking would grind to a halt. Why? Hungary’s own workforce is tapped out. Many Hungarians work abroad due to the higher wages.
That script flipped in 2024, when the cap on workers from non-EU countries was introduced due to the economic difficulties. The government said it could not welcome more than 65,000 foreigners. By 2025, it shrank to 35,000—a limit set to hold steady this year too.
The prime minister insists Hungary slams the door on migrants but rolls out the red carpet for guest workers on short stays (up to two years, plus a one-year extension). They earn, they leave. Yet in a chat with Germany’s Bild, he let slip that those who behave and work well could snag Hungarian citizenship.
- PM Orbán: Hungary welcomes French, Germans and Italians, rejects migrants – what about the guest workers?
Magyar: zero tolerance, starting June
Enter Péter Magyar with a radically tougher stance. He paints his future government as one of peace—no fuelling wars, no conscription revival. Illegal migration? He’d crush it, ditch any EU migration pact, and keep the southern border fence standing—making Brussels foot the bill.
Most explosively, he’d scrap the guest worker programme entirely from 1 June, Szeretlek Magyarország wrote. Magyar insists that under his governance, Hungary would take zero guest workers. Details on current workers or those with papers in hand? Radio silence so far.
He first floated this bombshell in his New Year’s speech, doubling down at yesterday’s international press conference.
Big fight ahead of the elections
Magyar dominates non-government polls by hundreds of thousands of votes—if the numbers hold. Still, April’s general election looms months away, and Orbán won’t surrender power without a brutal scrap.
- Click for more articles concerning the 2026 general elections.
Check out his full international press conference below:
This is an interesting political move by Magyar designed to totally undermine the Fidesz claim to be the only ones Hungarians can vote for to keep out migrants. Magyar has turned politics on its’ head and Fidesz will now have no room for an effective response. Dissatisfied Fidesz supporters will potentially see this as a reason to have less apprehesion about changing their vote to Tisza.
It is a smart move by Magyar, though, it will be undermined if he does not develop credibility to refuse any and all EU plans to begin White Replacement in Hungary.
Again : he cannot win unless he gets credibility on this issue.
This was a good beginning for him.
What a hack this guy is.
He wants to come down hard on people who work, obey the law, and contribute to Hungary, and kick them out. At the same time, he’d cave to the E.U. on the migration diktat, flooding Hungary with more than twice the number of rapists, robbers, terrorists, parasites, and other trash from the third world that invaded Europe illegally.
Legal and illegal migration are two totally different things. Hungarians know it and won’t be taken in by this globalist charlatan and Brussels puppet.
Yes, Dear Michael, your perception is the same perception Hungarian smalltowners and Rednecks have.
He has to change this perception.
He has several months to start sounding like a Xenophobic racist, or, at least, to the Hungarian Left.
Guest workers are in exclusive contract with the reigning government’s cronies, only they benefit from the guest workers. Billionare sheriffs are not your friends.
On the credibility note: it’s an easy win, due to my previous statement. Orban falls, those benefiting from his regime will come under scrutiny, and the fear-based system implodes.
Why Orban’s feudalistic system implodes, despite the full-on hate-mongering propaganda?
Because more-and-more people want him gone, anyone who came out from under his noise umbrella, realizes, what a fraud he is, and finds a new purpose for himself in the Hungarian political arena.