Greek Burdens Multiply With Illegal Immigrants Finding Back Door to Europe
George Papandreou, Greece's prime minister
Kostas Tsironis/Bloomberg
George Papandreou, Greece's prime minister.
George Papandreou, Greece's prime minister. Photographer: Kostas Tsironis/Bloomberg
Greece, battling to keep its economy from ruin, also is struggling with an increase in the number of asylum seekers using the country as a back door to Europe.
About 90 percent of illegal immigrants in the European Union arrived through Greece, according to Warsaw-based Frontex, the bloc’s agency for border security. At least 350 people try to cross into northeastern Greece from Turkey each day, Deputy Labor Minister Anna Dalara said yesterday.
All that’s wrong with Greece’s tax collection, state-run companies and pension system was laid bare this year as the country turned to the International Monetary Fund and EU for a 110 billion-euro ($146 billion) rescue. The country also lags behind other EU members in dealing with asylum seekers and Human Rights Watch this month described conditions at some detention centers as inhumane.
“If you look at Greece’s implementation of an asylum system over last 10 years, you will find a comparison to its economic policy implementation,” said Martin Baldwin-Edwards, co-director at the Mediterranean Migration Observatory at Panteion University in Athens. “It’s the same problem of the modernization of Greece and fitting in to the rest of the policies of the EU, which it’s finding very difficult.”
Prime Minister George Papandreou, who came to power in October 2009, promised to overhaul the process of registering and assessing asylum seekers. Dalara plans to lead a census of all immigrants next year.
More Arrests
Greek police uncovered a trafficking ring yesterday as it attempted to import 65 illegal immigrants who had paid between 1,200 euros and 2,600 euros each to get to the port city of Patras to catch a ship to Italy. The truck being used was carrying oranges as well as the human cargo of mostly Afghans in a concealed compartment, police said.
Lawmakers will vote next month on forming an independent authority to oversee the processing of arrivals, according to a draft bill submitted to parliament. Citizen Protection Minister Christos Papoutsis said yesterday the new reception centers will meet the standards of the EU and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR.
Greek riot police tore down tents earlier this week in a northern Athens suburb of about 30 asylum seekers staging a protest for several days outside the UNHCR.
Under Pressure
“The European Commission and many member states recognize the unprecedented pressure on Greece’s asylum and immigration management resulting from a large number of third-world country citizens arriving in Greece, due to its geographic location on the outer borders of the EU,” Dalara said in an e-mail yesterday. “Due to the crisis our country is facing, many of them view it as a stepping stone to other EU countries.”
Migration to Greece increased as Italy, Spain and Portugal tightened maritime borders by making deals with African countries to help intercept migrants at sea.
Greek authorities made 132,711 arrests of illegal immigrants in the first nine months of 2010, according to figures from the Labor Ministry. In that period, 31,000 migrants crossed the border from Turkey at Evros in northeastern Greece, more than four times the number in the same period of 2009, data compiled by Frontex show.
Last Loophole
“The route through Turkey and Greece seems to be one of the last entry point loopholes for migrants who arrive clandestinely,” said Franck Duvell, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford’s Centre on Migration. “The situation in Greece is very obviously a consequence of the European Union’s control policies on other borders.”
Greece agreed with Turkey in May to start sending immigrants back across the border, the same month Papandreou inked the bailout package with the IMF and EU.
The new legislation also is designed to speed up the handling of immigrants. Only a few dozen asylum cases are examined each week, with the majority of those being rejected, the Greek Council for Refugees said. In 2009, no Iraqis were granted asylum in Greece, compared with 77 percent of applicants in Germany being granted the status, the council said.
Greece has the lowest recognition rate for asylum seekers in Europe at less than 1 percent and a backlog of up to 50,000 cases, according to the UNHCR.
No Trust
Hamid, who arrived in Athens from Afghanistan three years ago, has remained in Greece as the police process his application for asylum. The 24-year-old is one of dozens of Afghans and Iranians camped out in front of Athens University to protest being trapped in a cycle of Greek paperwork.
“We thought Greece was a European country,” said Hamid, who declined to give his full name because he’s scared he might be sent home. “It’s so many years that they are saying this, but we don’t see any acts and we cannot trust it.”
Human Rights Watch said in a Dec. 6 report that detention centers in northern Greece violate international law. Women and children are forced to share crowded cells with men, and unsanitary conditions and unusable toilet facilities mean migrants use nearby fields, it said.
“The conditions in the detention centers are not simply bad, they are beyond human definition,” said Ioanna Pertsinidou, a social worker in Greece with aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres. “There are a number of things that can stick in your mind, but the worst thing is to have people packed like animals in a cage.”
EU Help
The Greek government said conditions will improve as it implements the measures in next month’s bill.
The European Commission said it’s working to help Greece. Between 2007 and 2013, Greece has the potential to receive up to 300 million euros in assistance through various refugee funds available to EU member states.
EU member states plan on sending experts to work with Greece to improve the country’s refugee system, Michele Cercone, spokesman for Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, said in a Dec. 10 e-mail.
Greece’s economy is forecast to shrink by 3 percent in 2011 after contracting by more than 4 percent this year. The country’s budget deficit, at 15.4 percent of economic output in 2009, is the widest in the euro region.
Greece has imposed austerity measures over the last year in exchange for the bailout from the EU and IMF to avoid a default. Lower salaries and pensions, higher taxes and third-quarter unemployment reaching 12.6 percent, the highest in almost 11 years, has tested support for the cash-strapped government.
The “budgetary climate” makes policies on immigration harder to implement in Greece, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in its 2010 International Migration Outlook.
“Greece is not adequately responding to its international obligations under refugee law and human rights law and that then leads to the humanitarian crisis we are facing at the moment,” Duvell said by telephone from Oxford, England.
To contact the reporter on this story: Natalie Weeks in Athens nweeks2@bloomberg.net Tom Stoukas in Athens at astoukas@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Rodney Jefferson at at r.jefferson@bloomberg.net
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