Hungarian diaspora

Hungarian diaspora (Magyar diaspora) is a term that encompasses the total ethnic Hungarian population located outside of current-day Hungary.

There are two main groups of the diaspora. In the first one are those, who are autochthonous to their homeland, and live outside Hungary since the border changes of the post-World War I Treaty of Trianon of 1920. The victorious forces redrew the borders of Hungary so that it runs through Hungarian majority areas. As a consequence, 3.3 million Hungarians found themselves outside the new borders. These Hungarians are usually not counted into the term "Hungarian diaspora", regardless, they are listed in this article. The other main group are the emigrants, who left Hungary at various times (e.g., the Hungarian Revolution of 1956). There has been some emigration since Hungary joined the EU, especially to countries such as Germany, although this has not been as drastic as for certain other Central European countries like Poland or Slovakia.

Hungarian immigration patterns to Western Europe increased in the 1990s and especially since 2004, after Hungary's admission in the European Union. Thousands of Hungarians from Hungary sought available work through guest-worker contracts in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Finland, Sweden, Spain and Portugal.

A proposal supported by the DAHR to grant Hungarian citizenship to Hungarians living in Romania but without meeting Hungarian-law residency requirements was narrowly defeated at a 2004 referendum in Hungary. The referendum was invalid because of not enough participants. After the failure of the 2004 referendum, the leaders of the Hungarian ethnic parties in the neighboring countries formed the HTMSZF organization in January 2005, as an instrument lobbying for preferential treatment in the granting of Hungarian citizenship.

In 2010 some amendments were passed in Hungarian law facilitating an accelerated naturalization process for ethnic Hungarians living abroad; among other changes, the residency-in-Hungary requirement was waved. Between 2011 and 2012, 200,000 applicants took advantage of the new, accelerated naturalization process; there were another 100,000 applications pending in the summer of 2012. As of February 2013, the Hungarian government has granted almost 400,000 citizenships to Hungarians ‘beyond the borders’. In June 2013, Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén announced that he expects the number to reach about half a million by the end of the year.

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