Free Republic

Across Hungary, George Soros’s aged face dominates bus stops, pedestrian pathways, and major intersections with the cryptic message, “Don’t let Soros have the last laugh.” Last laugh? A tag line explained the allusion: “99% reject illegal immigration.” The anti-Soros ad campaign conflates the controversial financier’s investments in leftwing political causes, including open borders, with the European Union’s ongoing effort to force Hungary and other EU countries to accept an annual quota of illegal immigrants. To redistribute hundreds of thousands of people who arrived in Italy and Greece in 2015, the EU assigned each member state a compulsory number: 1,294 for...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel Tuesday criticized an eastern European proposal to close the Balkans refugee route and vowed to push for a plan with Turkey to reduce the influx, at an EU summit. Merkel, under heavy pressure at home to reduce arrivals, supports a plan under which transit country Turkey would seal its borders and then fly refugees to Europe where they would be settled under an EU quota system. However, most countries in the European Union have shown little enthusiasm for the idea, and the so-called Visegrad Four - Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary - have openly...