‘Greek problem’ at heart of debates on migration

Source: “EUROPOLITICS -the European affairs daily”

The member states’ home affairs ministers will meet, on 8 March in Brussels, to debate governance of the border-free Schengen area and in particular the problems they are experiencing with Greece, the main gateway to Europe for 80% of “illegal migrants” (more than 60,000 caught at the border between Greece and Turkey in 2011).

The crossing point

Source: http://www.economist.com/node/21549012

Would-be immigrants to Europe can go almost anywhere—for a price

IT TAKES a few minutes to cross the Evros river, now the main entry point for illegal immigrants from Asia into Europe, but it can be frightening. On the Turkish side people-smugglers can be armed. In winter the river is fast-flowing and very cold. Groups who pay €300 ($400) a head to cross are packed into rubber dinghies at night. Some migrants get panicky—especially because few know how to swim.

So it is a relief to find friendly faces on the Greek side. Many migrants are briefly arrested, detained or surrender to the police. In most cases they are given a document letting them stay for 30 days. Those who cross near Alexandroupolis go to the railway station, where they may visit the Café Paris and meet a young Moroccan who matches migrants with onward transport. The price for being smuggled from Athens to France in a secret lorry compartment is €4,000. Getting out by aeroplane is “very difficult”. An increasingly popular option is to go via the western Balkans. The rate from Alexandroupolis to Austria, along a route managed by Greeks, Albanians, Serbs and Moroccans, is €2,800.

Most illegal immigrants in Greece have crossed the Evros. In 2009 local police registered 8,800 migrants here; in 2010, 47,000; and in 2011, 55,000. In January this year 2,800 are known to have crossed. The most numerous are Pakistanis, followed by Afghans, Bangladeshis, Algerians and Congolese. By some estimates Greece has half a million illegal migrants. The euro crisis makes it hard for them to find work.

Illegal migrants are like water, says Despina Syrri, a researcher: when one channel is blocked they find another. In the past many immigrants who did not want to stay for long in Greece could find work, at least temporarily. Some procured fake passports with visas for Europe’s Schengen zone. Many smuggled themselves on to lorries heading by ferry to Italy. But these options are all getting harder. That is why thousands now move north through Macedonia and Serbia towards Hungary. Smaller numbers trek through Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro and Croatia.

It is hard to stanch the flow. Polish, German and other policemen from Frontex, the European Union’s border agency, armed with the latest technology, peer over the border into Turkey and help their Greek colleagues to spot columns of would-be migrants, sometimes 100-strong. The Greek police inform the Turks. But on the Turkish side the army is in charge, not the police, and it often arrives too late. Short of a change in Turkish policy, the use of force or a wall, the flow will continue.

The border is some 206km (128 miles) long. All of it is river, except for a 12.5km stretch of land. In 2010 at least 26,000 crossed here, but last year that number had fallen to 900. And early last month the Greeks started building a fence to stop people walking across. The reason for the decline since 2010, says Giorgios Salamangas, the local police chief, is that Frontex’s early warnings have had an effect. More pertinently, Turkish troops seem to have decided to change their policy of “pretending they could not see them at all”.

In Istanbul Murat Celikkan, a civil-rights activist who has worked with refugees, says that Turkey, itself overwhelmed with migrants from Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and now Syria, wants to get rid of them. However, given the poor state of their relations with the EU, the Turks also see this flow as leverage in talks with Brussels. And they do not see why Turkey should take on the burden of hosting immigrants just to help out the EU.

In a snowbound Banja Koviljaca, on the Serbian border with Bosnia, Anosh, a forlorn young Afghan, has ended up in Serbia’s centre for asylum-seekers. In 2008 51 people applied for asylum in Serbia. Last year the number was 3,134. The true figure crossing into Serbia must be several times higher. Anosh crossed the Evros last year and bought a fake Romanian passport in Athens for €400. He boarded a ferry to Italy, but was rumbled on the Italian side when the police got their Romanian translator to quiz him. Sent back to Greece, he and a group of Afghans paid a guide €500 each to help them walk into Macedonia. There they stayed in a safe house for two days and, after a taxi ride to the border, were shepherded across the hills into Serbia for another €200.

Rados Djurovic, who runs Serbia’s Asylum Protection Centre, says that few of the asylum-seekers want to stay in Serbia. They apply because it gives them a chance to rest, to get medical care, and to move around legally until they work out how to leave and where to go. Most important, they get an identity card that allows them to receive money, via a wire-transfer agency, to continue their journey.

From Bangladesh to Subotica on the Serbian border with Hungary, where groups of Afghans and others live in huts on frozen scrubland, countries play pass-the-buck with these immigrants. In Kosovo, off the main route, police sources estimate that over 1,000 pass through every year. Some say that, when they are caught in Macedonia or Serbia, policemen sometimes take the migrants to the border and tell them to walk across to Switzerland, Hungary or a “Muslim country”.

Most migrants aim to get to Hungary because they can then cross easily into Austria and, thanks to Schengen, get as far as Calais without border controls. “So long as you have got the money,” says Mr Djurovic, “you can get anywhere.”

Read more: “Balkan visitors“

UPDATE on racist attack in Corinth: Suspect detained

TEXT: ANDRÉS MOURENZA // PHOTO: ALESSANDRO PENSO
Finally, on Monday morning (2 days after the incident) the suspect of the racist attack to migrants in Corinth was arrested by the police. Also one of the two hospitalized migrants was able to leave the medical premises and return to the train station, with the other migrants. Nabi is still in hospital, well treated, and although with difficulties, he is recovering as photographers Alessandro Penso and Giorgos Moutafis were able to confirm this Monday after visiting him. Also journalist Antonio Cuesta visited the migrants at the train station this Monday.

Racist attack in Greece: 3 wounded, 2 disappeared

Nabi, a 20-years old Moroccan, is lying on the ground. He looks dead.

Twenty minutes earlier we were sitting in the recovered-from-garbage chairs and furniture, smoking cigarettes and chatting in one of the abandoned wagons of the old train station of Corinth (Greece). Nabi lives there with about other 50 migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Yemen. Nasir—a polyglot, art lover Afghan interpreter—asks Nabi, another art lover, to draw something. The young Moroccan sketches the boat of the Hellenic Seaways moored just 200 meters down in the bay. They all are waiting the lucky day in which they will be able to catch the ferry; climbing to it, or hidden in the load of the trucks that the boat carries to Italy. And then… go further North in search for a job, a future, a safe and normal life. Crisis-hit Greece has become a nightmare for them. There is not the slightest possibility for work in a country with rocketing unemployment figures. Greeks don’t want them, neither they want to stay in Greece, but they are stuck here because European Union treaties allow third countries to return them to the state where they first entered the EU. And Greece has been the gate to Europe in the last years for 90 % of migrants.

Now, Nabi is lying on the ground.

Construction of Evros border fence begins

Construction of a fence along the Evros River on the Greek-Turkish border officially commenced on Monday, budgeted at 3,162.5 million euros, is due for completion in late August or early September.
Citizens protection minister Christos Papoutsis declared the commencement of the construction of the fence in the Kastanies region, after earlier inaugurating the Border Surveillance Operational Center in the town of Nea Vyssa, where earlier a group of demonstrators protested against the construction of the fence and the Center.

Fence on Greek-Turkish border to be ready in five months

The contract to build a fence on Greece’s border with Turkey in Evros was signed on Thursday.

The 12.5-kilometer construction is being built to deter illegal immigration and trafficking but has prompted opposition from human rights groups.

Citizens’ Protection Minister Christos Papoutsis said that the signing of the deal proved the government was serious about moving ahead with the construction of the fence.

“This is the best answer to all those who argued that the project would never begin,” he said.

The fence is due to be completed within five months and will cost about 5 million euros.

Last year, more than 47,000 illegal immigrants were detained in Evros.

Source: ekathimerini.com , Thursday Jan 19, 2012

Albanians in Greece: Heading home again

Source: http://www.economist.com/node/21542818

IT IS lunchtime and children pour out of Sunday-school classes in Thessaloniki. Waiting parents seem agitated as they talk to Valbona Hystuna, a teacher. The adults speak Albanian; the children talk to each other in Greek. Many of the youngsters have no knowledge of Albania. But the crisis in Greece is forcing their families to return home.

The latest census by Albania’s statistical office found only 2.8m inhabitants in the country, several hundred thousand fewer than expected and 7.7% less than a decade ago. As many as 1.4m are believed to have emigrated in the past 20 years, over half of them to Greece. But jobless Albanians have begun to return. Many men worked in construction, which has ground to a halt in Greece.

There is much anecdotal evidence of Albanians going home, but few statistics. Edmond Haxhinasto, Albania’s foreign minister, says only a few have returned. Still, Ms Hystuna says that “a lot of people have left, a lot plan to leave and everyone is talking about it.” In the past many Albanians lived and worked in Greece illegally, but most of them now have residence permits. Yet those who lose their jobs may also lose their permits, forcing them either to return home or to stay illegally.

Albanians have mostly integrated well. Their children often speak better Greek than Albanian; many need language classes before going back to Albania. But, says Ms Hystuna, the Greeks can make life difficult. The anxious parents she spoke to told her that the authorities have, out of the blue, insisted that the Albanian papers their Greek-born children have are unacceptable, since they use the Albanian rather than the Greek name for Thessaloniki.

As with migrant numbers, remittances are hard to measure. But what figures there are point to a sharp decline. In 2007 migrants sent home an estimated €950m ($1.3 billion). In 2010 that figure shrank to €690m; for the first three quarters of 2011 it was €475m. In 2009 remittances were reckoned to make up 9% of Albania’s GDP. Yet the economy, unlike Greece’s, has not gone into recession: it is expected to have grown by 2.5% in 2011.

Many Albanians in Greece are transferring savings to banks at home, fearful of what might happen if Greece leaves the euro. Some Greek companies have also begun to set up firms in Albania run by trusted Albanians who worked for them in Greece. So far, the effects of being a tiny economy largely dependent on recession-hit Greece and Italy have been negative but not disastrous. Yet as more Albanians move back, they will find jobs (and decent wages) scarce at home.

“Migrants needed to fill job shortages in the EU”

Source: http://www.athensnews.gr/issue/13471/50902

AFTER years spent trying to build “Fortress Europe” to keep undocumented migrants out of the European Union, Brussels now wants to make it easier for immigrants to get in and boost the 27-member bloc’s economies.

The European Commission is now proposing a new policy on migration and mobility which will benefit both sides of the immigration fence – the EU and the source countries.

Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU’s home affairs commissioner, said migrants should be able to get visas faster, find jobs matching their skills more easily and send money to family members back home more cheaply.

Her plan calls for closer cooperation with non-EU neighbouring countries, as well as those in Africa and the East, in order to attract more short-term students, researchers and business people and families.

The EU needs immigrant workers to fill gaps of a shrinking workforce.

Cracking open the EU’s door to legal immigration has been on Brussels’ table since 2005 when the commission unveiled plans to lure highly-skilled migrants to the 27-member bloc. In 2007, the commission warned the 27-member bloc will need millions of new workers to compensate for an ageing population.

A common policy on migration will contribute to the EU’s economic growth and competitiveness, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Migrant influx peaks

Even as the repercussions of the debt crisis make the prospects of a new life in Greece less than rosy, the influx of undocumented immigrants into the country has increased significantly over the past year, according to figures released on Wednesday by the European Union’s border monitoring agency, Frontex. However, a top agency official has told Kathimerini that Greece woefully lacks the infrastructure to accommodate the would-be migrants.

Detentions at the Greek-Turkish land border increased by 20 percent in October compared to the same month last year, according to Frontex, which referred to “an absolute monthly record of 9,600 illegal border crossings.” “Average detections were over 300 irregular migrants crossing that border on a daily basis,” a statement issued by the agency said.

The agency attributed the “dramatic development” to a combination of factors. These include the absence of sufficient detention facilities both in Greece and Turkey, and the lack of adequate agreements for the readmission of immigrants from specific countries of origin.

Frontex’s deputy executive director Gil Arias Fernandez told Kathimerini at a press briefing on Wednesday that most of the 26 countries contributing staff and equipment to the agency’s operation at the Greek-Turkish border were increasingly reluctant to continue, largely due to the failure of Greek authorities to create new reception centers for migrants, particularly in Evros, a key main gateway for immigrants to cross into Greece from Turkey. Most of the current reception centers in Greece are “unacceptable,” according to Fernandez, who also criticized authorities for refusing to cooperate with nongovernmental organizations.

Additional contributing factors cited by Frontex appear to apportion a fair burden of the blame to Turkish authorities — the proximity of Istanbul airport (with low-cost connecting flights), Turkey’s liberal visa policy and the “numerous facilitation networks established in Turkey with links to Greece,” an apparent reference to cross-border smuggling rings.

Source: http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_6926_16/11/2011_415122

Flight deportation from Athens

A group of 61 undocumented migrants from Pakistan and Afghanistan boarded a charter flight bound for Islamabad and Kabul on October 19.

This was the fifth expulsion flight to take off since March when Greece deported some 73 Dominicans. They were accompanied by 139 police officers and two doctors. European Union regulation requires two police officers to escort each immigrant on a flight.

So far this year, a total 335 undocumented migrants have been flown back to their country of origin.

The number of undocumented migrants in Greece is at a record 470,000 – a 60-percent increase compared to 2008 – according to the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (Eliamep).

http://www.athensnews.gr/portal/9/49270