Hungarian passport issued before 2020 reason for tightening US Visa Waiver rules, says State Department

“In 2011, the Hungarian Government launched a simplified naturalization process. Nearly 1 million people gained Hungarian citizenship through this program before Hungary began instituting full biometric and identity verification in 2020,” Matthew Miller told MTI during a press briefing on Tuesday, local time.

“During that period from 2011 to 2020, the program lacked adequate procedures to verify applicants’ identities before allowing them to obtain citizenship. We know that valid Hungarian passports were then fraudulently obtained by criminals and individuals with no connection to Hungary,” he said.

In response to a question concerning whether the US government had concrete information on Hungarian passport holders with questionable background having entered the United States, he said, “I don’t have information on people who came”.

“We looked at the fact that there were people who were getting passports without going through rigorous screening that we think is necessary to gain – should be necessary to gain a passport. And so we raised the issue with the Hungarian Government, gave them an opportunity to address the situation, and they refused to do so,” said Miller.

In a statement issued in reaction, Bence Retvari, the Hungarian interior ministry’s state secretary, said the remarks of the US State Department’s spokesman were “deceptive” and “false”, insisting that Hungary had conducted a legal procedure in each concrete case indicated by US law enforcement authorities. Those persons implicated have been subjected to criminal investigation and have been stripped of their Hungarian citizenship, Retvari said in the statement, adding that despite those measures the US government demanded the disclosure of personal data in connection with Hungarians with dual citizenship living abroad.

“The United States of America demands from Hungary the disclosure of personal data of those 900,000 Hungarians with dual citizenship living abroad,” he said. “Hungary will however not release such data to anyone because that would compromise the security of Hungarians living abroad.”

Retvari said there was no guarantee that should the US’s request be fulfilled, the personal data of ethnic Hungarians living in Transcarpathia would not be immediately released to Ukraine, which he said would carry serious consequences for those Hungarians in light of a Ukrainian law banning dual citizenship.

He said the US was “taking revenge” on Hungary because Hungary was not fulfilling the United States’ “unjustified request”.