The Latest: Hungary debates anti-refugee legislation

Published October 17, 2016

The Latest on Europe's response to massive influx of asylum-seekers and migrants (all times local):

11:30 a.m.

Hungary's prime minister says his proposed constitutional amendment against any future efforts by the European Union to relocate refugees is about the reights of individual EU nations to oppose an "empire directed by Brussels."

Prime Minister Viktor Orban, speaking Monday at the opening of the parliamentary debate of the amendment, said each country has the right to decide its own fate while others want to replace democratic decision-making with "a faceless bureaucratic directorate."

An Oct. 2 referendum was invalid because of low turnout, but 98 percent of participating voters supported the government's opposition to mandatory quotas.

The far-right Jobbik party supports the amendment "because multiculturalism does not work," while the Socialists, the largest leftist opposition group, said they would boycott the process.

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10:25 a.m.

Fourteen children who have been living in a border refugee camp in northern France are due to arrive in Britain to be reunited with their families.

They are the first of dozens of children from the Calais camp to be resettled in the U.K. this week.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says the children will register at a government building in south London Monday before being reunited with relatives at local churches.

Under pressure from charities, religious leaders and French authorities, Britain has agreed to accept scores of children from Calais.

Thousands of migrants fleeing war and hardship have reached the English Channel port town in the hope of making it to Britain.

France says it will soon close the slum-like camp known as the "jungle" where many live.

URL

https://www.foxnews.com/world/the-latest-hungary-debates-anti-refugee-legislation