Repeated amnesties fail there too
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3882
by Ioannis Kolovos
Greece is situated in the southeast part of the Mediterranean Sea. In the north the country borders with Albania, the Former Yugoslav Republic of “Macedonia” (the name is http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4420.
Until the late ’80s Greece was largely a homogeneous country with a population consisting of Greek Orthodox (98%), a minority of Greek http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5548, Bulgarians and other Eastern Europeans.
The centre-right government of the time (1990-1993) was not prepared to tackle the situation and, despite mounting some deportation efforts, it reluctantly tolerated this influx. With the immigrant population steadily increasing and a black market for cheap labor having been created, the centre-left government(1993-2004) decided to do something about it. The proposals to the government both from the police and a special committee that was set up were to record all illegal immigrants in the country but to offer a chance to regularization (something like an amnesty) only to illegal immigrants who did not originate from neighboring countries. Moreover, the proposals recommended that the scope of the regularization was to be short-term and that it should try to fill existing labor market needs.In 1997 the government decided to offer a chance of regularization to all illegal immigrants (at that time their number was estimated to be about 500,000). This effort was largely unsuccessful as it managed to regularize only half of that population, while the influx of illegal immigrants continued. The centre-left government decided to offer illegal immigrants a second chance of regularization in 2001 (at that time their number was estimated to be about 650,000). Due to their sheer number and the inadequacy of Greek public administration infrastructure, this effort failed as well.
This “policy” of successive regularizations was continued by the centre-right government that regained office in 2004 (it should be noted that, while in opposition, the centre-right party had criticized the centre-left government’s regularization efforts). Two more regularization chances were offered, in 2005 and in 2007.
But the situation only gets worse. According to the latest available data Greece’s immigrant population is about 1,250,000 people, 350,000 of whom are ethnic Greeks from neighboring Albania and the ex-USSR. This leaves about 900,000 non-Greek immigrants, 600,000 of whom have a residence permit through consecutive regularizations. The remaining 300,000 are the official estimate of the illegal immigrant population in the country. About 60% of the regularized immigrants come from neighboring Albania (a country with a grudge against Greece), followed by 5% from Bulgaria.
But in the last few years the numbers of illegal immigrants from Africa and Asia are also rising. They come either through the eastern borders with Turkey or cross the Mediterranean Sea in small boats (usually from Egypt). According to another estimate by the National Intelligence Service (the Greek Secret Service) the total number of immigrants in Greece (both regularized and illegal) could be as high as 2,500,000 people!
Taking into account that Greece’s total population is about 11,000,000 then, officially, non-Greek immigrants make up 8.2% of the country’s population. In US terms, this would be the equivalent of receiving a population of 17,000,000 ex post facto regularized immigrants (through amnesty bills) and 8,200,000 illegal immigrants in the last 18 years.
The Greek governments made a catastrophic mistake in starting the dominoes of successive regularizations falling. This policy sent out the wrong message. It gave the impression that Greece is soft touch and if someone somehow makes it into the country they will get a chance of regularization sooner or later. Moreover, Greek governments, by offering regularization, essentially rewarded the breach of the law both by illegal immigrants (illegal entry/stay) and by those who employed them (hire of illegal labor).
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