Migrants lose in futile game on Hungary's border Asurma Arab and her family spent more than two years waiting in Serbia for their chance to cross the steel fence that Hungary erected along its border to keep out migrants like them. Little did the Afghan family know, their asylum plea was already a lost cause. Under laws passed in 2018, Hungary has been automatically rejecting applications of anyone who has travelled through a "safe country", in this case Serbia, in what rights groups say has turned the asylum process into a cruel charade. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES