Immigration to Greece
As larger numbers of migrants entered Greece in the 1990s, the Greek government's immigration policy began to be seen as lacking the control and legal framework to manage the situation.
In 2015, arrivals of refugees by sea have increased dramatically in Greece mainly due to the ongoing Syrian Civil War.
[10][11] Many came to escape turmoil and conflict in their homeland or for the economic opportunities afforded to them in Greece, a member of the EU with a large informal market.
[11][14] More than half of the legal foreigners are in the greater Athens area, and a quarter can be found in Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city to the north.
[10] Many irregular entrants and illegal immigrants do not see Greece as their final destination; they plan to work only to raise enough funds to move on to other countries in the EU.
No matter how long their stay in Greece, many undocumented migrants are excluded from the majority of Greek society and face political, social, and economic marginalization.
[14] This informal economy needs cheap, unskilled labor to survive, since young people in Greece are unwilling to accept employment in these sectors.
Additionally, Greece's reliance on tourism means that the borders have never been adequately[clarification needed] policed (though this has begun to change, as with the rest of the continent).
Greek authorities believe that 90% of illegal immigrants in the EU enter through Greece, many fleeing because of unrest and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
[23] Numerous solutions have been proposed by the Greek government such as building a fence on the Turkish border and setting up detention camps.
Moreover, the fact that the Turkish authorities are not complying with the terms of the signed agreements is creating several problems during the procedures of surrender of the illegal immigrants in the border areas.
[26] For example, a high-level terrorist of Al-Qaeda who passed the Greek borders from Turkey was arrested in his attempt to receive political asylum in the country.
At the same time, flows from Asia and the Middle East — mainly Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Bangladesh — towards Greece appear to have increased as well.
[17] Albanians typically fill the unskilled jobs that native workers find undesirable, which are mainly connected with tourism, seasonal agricultural activities, and the domestic sector, such as childcare, household services, and the care of the elderly.
[12] Illegal immigrants from former Soviet bloc countries in particular also use chain migration, in which close links with home villages are maintained and relatives or friends are recruited to work in Greece and recommended to employers; jobs are transferred between immigrants returning to their home countries for a few months' visit and newcomers from their hometowns.
[11] This means it is very difficult for migrants without documentation to obtain health and public services from the state, or to bring cases against an abusive employer.
[14] There are also a large number of women and children who are taken into Greece for sex work and who are placed in exploitative situations but can not receive help because of their illegal status.
There is a large percentage of mainly under-aged adolescent Albanian girls and boys under ten, for instance, who are taken illegally into Greece to work in the sex industry.
[16] When immigrants began flooding into Greece in large numbers for the first time in the 1990s, the Greek government was not properly prepared for the management and control of so many migrants.
Presidential decrees 358/1997 and 359/1997 were ill-designed, mismanaged, and made it difficult for migrants to be successfully regularized, but they laid the first foundations for an institutional framework in Greece that tried to actually deal with immigration in a way that went beyond deportation.
[11] There were some benefits to this law, such as the right to be informed in a language one understood while in detention, and obligatory nine-year education for migrant children.
[14] The immigration law was also still discriminatory regarding citizenship acquisition and made distinctions between co-ethnic returnees and "foreigners" or "aliens".
A single two-year stay and work permit was introduced that could be renewed for another two years, depending on local labor market conditions.
These laws also included an Action Plan to successfully incorporate immigrants into Greek society based on respect of their fundamental human rights.
[11] However, under Law 3386/2005, immigrants who are unable to prove they are legal residences of Greece are still denied access to any public and social services.
Since this is not widely regarded as an important issue, reform will continue to be marginal at best and will not take the necessary steps to make real, lasting changes to migration policy.
[7] However, political instability and warfare in the Balkans in the early 1990s made the Greeks begin to worry about the conflict nearing their own borders.
[7] The Greek nation-state is strongly tied to an ethnically based identity that centers on common ancestry, language, and Orthodox religion.
[10] The rise of immigration in the 1990, then, was seen not just as a source of potential economic upheaval, but as a threat to the cultural and ethnic purity and authenticity of the Greek nation.
According to a book by Gabriella Lazaridis, Greeks hold very low opinions and stereotypical ideas about many groups of immigrants, particularly Albanians, Muslims, and Turks, due to historical preconditions.
