Anna Gall believes the Hungarian government wants to rob her of her birthright.
The 33-year-old, who works as a school teacher in Romania, wants her kin in Hungary to vote "yes" in a referendum on Sunday and grant citizenship to ethnic Hungarians like her who live outside the country.
The move is opposed by the country's Socialist government and backed by the right wing Fidesz opposition.
"It would mean a lot emotionally to know that the motherland accepts us. What keeps us going is the knowledge that we belong somewhere," said Gall, who teaches in a peasant village in the Carpathian mountains, some 670 km (416 miles) from Budapest.
The government says nationalist sentiments stirred by the referendum and Fidesz have no place in modern Hungary, which joined the European Union in May.
The issue is fraught by the divisions between Hungary's post-communist left and the virulently anti-communist right, especially in the wake of a bruising 2002 election campaign which saw Fidesz lose power and split families politically.
But for many, healing the wounds of the Trianon Treaty which punished Hungary for its part in World War One by parcelling out its land among its neighbours, is precisely the point.
According to historian Paul Lendvai: "A single word, Trianon, sums up for all Hungarians to this day the most devastating tragedy in their history".
Up to five million ethnic Hungarians live overseas, compared with a population inside the country of 10 million.
It is the 2.5 million in Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine who are key to the vote and feelings run especially high over Transylvania in Romania, known as Erdely in Hungarian, the birthplace of poets like Janos Arany and kings such as the medieval monarch Matyas.
Those backing a "yes" say it will help heal the hurt.
Fidesz leader and former prime minister Viktor Orban told a rally: "We can remake the broken mirror into a clear new one into which we can all look with pride and serenity."
The ruling Socialists believe Fidesz is using the issue to regain political power.
Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany accuses Orban of "nationalism and populism".
He said Hungary, "needs to look towards the future instead of mourning over the injustice done to our grandfathers."
Opinion polls suggest voters will endorse citizenship, but that too few will turn out to make the referendum valid.
For some on the left, the government has lost its claim to the moral high ground by raising the spectre of hordes of immigrants arriving to swamp Hungary's benefit system. For many, a "no" vote is inconceivable as it means denying their brethren.
IMMIGRANT ECONOMICS
Snowy Satu Mare is typical of the ethnic Hungarian villages of eastern Transylvania where horse-drawn carts are still an essential part of daily peasant life and living standards simply cannot be compared to Hungary.
No ethnic Romanians and just a handful of Roma live in the village, which is called Marefalva in Hungarian.
It is poor people like these who the Socialists fear will flood in.
They say if 800,000 people were to come, the number who recognised themselves as Hungarian under previous Fidesz benefit legislation from 2001, the cost would be 537 billion forints ($2.8 billion) a year, equal to half the 2005 budget deficit.
That is a powerful message to some Socialist voters who are being told there is no money for education and hospitals.
The figures are disputed by Fidesz and business leaders who say Hungary is suffering from a skills shortage and that workers who speak the same language would be a blessing.
The Hungarian Chambers of Commerce said on Monday that the net effect on the budget is likely to be positive for the next 15 years.
It estimates that there are already 70,000-80,000 ethnic Hungarians working here illegally.
Among those is Zsuzsa, in her mid-20s, who does two jobs as a cleaner and babysitter and studies computing at night school.
"Anyone who wants to be here is already here," Zsuzsa said.
Zoltan Kantor, an ethnologist at Budapest's Laszlo Teleki Institute, who was born in Romania, says no one can know for sure how many people will come.
He acknowledged there could be a cost if the parents of young working people followed their offspring, but said that nationality should not be measured in cost.
"It is one step from this to say that we should count how much you pay for a gypsy in Hungary, or let us export the poor," Kantor said.
In Satu Mare there is little desire to swap the hard life of the Carpathians for modern Hungary, whether peasant, labourer, teacher or small business owner.
"I consider myself Hungarian, but I will not leave my village. Why should I start a new life again?," said 36-year-old Istvan David, who worked in the construction industry in Budapest for six years before returning to his native village.
Source: Reuters
02.12.2004