The government has allotted 6.5 billion forints ($31 million) to construct the four-metre-high wire fence that will run the 175-kilometre length of Hungary's border with Serbia. Some 54,000 refugees have arrived this year and Hungary is receiving more asylum applications per capita than any other EU state. Migrants from Syria rest after crossing illegally the border between Serbia and Hungary, near Szeged, Hungary on Wednesday. Credit:Getty Images For thousands of people like Omar, who reached the southern city of Szeged after a long journey from his bombed-out home in Syria, the Hungarian welcome has been mixed and bewildering. Some volunteers have been distributing food and clothes but neo-Nazi groups have met the migrants with shouts of "Sieg Heil!" and "White Hungary". This month, the neo-Nazis have gathered both at the gates of a refugee camp in the eastern city of Debrecen and at the entrance to Budapest's Keleti railway station. "You can do something with your free time other than hate," said Beata Eszes, a spokeswoman for anti-fascists who tried to counter the Keleti rally, but liberals were outnumbered by members of the far-right Jobbik party and the HVIM, or Sixty-Four Counties Youth Movement, an ultra-nationalist group that campaigns for the restoration of a "Greater Hungary" including parts of neighbouring states where ethnic Hungarians live.

"The time is now – Hungary is not a refugee camp," HVIM leader Gyorgy Gyula Zagyva told about 500 of his black-shirted supporters. "The world should know we don't want to see them (the migrants) and they shouldn't come here. We will go to the borders in buses; we will turn back the Africans, if the forces of law and order prove incapable of doing so." Hungarian interior minister Sandor Pinter (centre) and Defence Minister Csaba Hende (left) at press conference next to the first portion of the fence, on Wednesday. Credit:Getty Images Migrants melted away from the station during the demonstration. Earlier, the groups huddled on blankets in that area had appeared to come more from Afghanistan than the Middle East and their motivation seemed in part economic. "Go car Germany," said one, with limited English. His friend said he preferred Italy, adding: "I am poor." Hungarian ministers inspect the first portion of the fence. Credit:Getty Images

The influx of migrants has split Hungary, a country of 10 million that is still recovering from its Communist past and has plenty of its own social problems. For example, pensions here are lower than in crisis-hit Greece. Few outsiders speak Hungarian and multiculturalism is a new concept for many. Liberals, agonising over what they see as the rise of a new Iron Curtain only a quarter of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall, point out that the world took 200,000 Hungarian refugees after the Soviet crushing of an uprising here in 1956, and young, middle-class Hungarians have benefited from EU freedoms to work in cities such as London. Hungarian soldiers place barbed wire near Morahalom, Hungary on Thursday. Credit:AP "The 1956 refugees are ashamed of those fomenting hatred today," said Ms Eszes. "Half a million Hungarians work as migrants abroad – and you fear migrants?" "The refugees are extremely vulnerable, in a strange world of strange people," said language teacher Zoltan Mezo. "They just want to live: a gulp of water, a bite of bread. It's what Jesus has been teaching for 2000 years but have we got the message yet?"

Construction of the fence began on Monday despite heavy criticism from other European countries. Credit:AP Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose conservative Fidesz Party dominates parliament and who takes some of his cues from Russian President Vladimir Putin, has presided over a populist billboard campaign in which migrants are told to respect Hungarian ways. The fact that the billboards are in Hungarian, and so incomprehensible to the migrants, suggests the intended audience is domestic. "We Hungarians must stick to our self-defence priorities and decide for ourselves who we want to let into our house, our home, our country," Mr Orban said in a radio address. Migrants sleep at a parking lot near Belgrade's main bus and train station, in Serbia on Thursday. Credit:Reuters Perhaps the only thing the liberals and right-wingers agree on is that the reception of the migrants has been poorly organised. Once in Hungary, they are registered and given papers allowing them to board trains to "open" refugee camps.

"Obviously, we would prefer if they didn't enter the country," said Bela Incze of the HVIM. "But if they are here, they shouldn't be allowed to meander without supervision. The authorities should take them to designated camps, which should be locked up." It was the plight of exhausted refugees, locked out of the station waiting room and confused about their onward connection to Debrecen, which prompted volunteers at Szeged to start handing out milk and the milk of human kindness. Follow FairfaxForeign on Twitter Follow FairfaxForeign on Facebook