Greece has completed the barbed-wire fence at its North-East borders to Turkey. With 10,365 meter length and 4 meter height the fence extends all along the land borders, from Kastanies posting until the Evros river.
According to Greek officials, the fence cannot be climbed without mechanical means. Of course, illegal immigrants can still swim through the Evros river and reach Greece.
With a total cost of 3 million euro, Greece hopes to prevent the influx of illegal immigrants to the country. The original budget calculation was 5 million euro.
The construction of the fence lasted almost one year and started under PASOK minister for citizen protection Christos Papoutsis.
With the barbed-wires keeping away unwanted and unwelcome migrants, I see an increase of poor souls trying to reach Greece through the waters of the Aegean Sea, often with tragic consequences that drown lives and violent end dreams just one or two nautical miles away from the solid land.
A fence is not enough to stop illegal immigration as the human traffickers can get inspired to thousand alternative ways. Eliminate the reasons for immigration, combat the trafficking rings, outside and inside the country. Them and their helpers.
I met a very well educated and well spoken young man from Bangladesh who told me how he got to Preveza and the horrors he had to endure = He swam the Evros.
The completion of the 10.4 Km long fence is a concrete step in the right direction, but that alone isn’t a panacea. To effectively curb the flow of undocumented immigrants, the Greek authorities have to: 1) Increase the frequency of the border patrols conducted by both the Frontex and the Hellenic Police, 2) Provide the border guarding agencies with more personnel, money and equipment, 3) Coordinate the efforts of the ground units with the new land based surveillance center, as well as with air surveillance assets. 4) Expedite the creation of detention centers, 5) Expedite the asylum awarding and the deportation procedures, 6) Impose stiff penalties on employers providing work to undocumented immigrants, 7) Reduce the para-economy, 8) Deport all violent illegal immigrants after they’ve served their prison sentences, 9) Repatriate all the non-violent undocumented immigrant inmates ASAP. 10) Crack down hard on the criminal networks issuing fake permits to undocumented immigrants, 11) Expand the operation Xenios Zeus throughout Greece. 12) Encourage Greek citizens to call the Police and to anonymously report undocumented immigrants.
hahaha! great plan for countries with money. I wonder if countries taking these measures manage to get illegal immigration into control.
It’s less important what other countries have or haven’t accomplished with their immigration policies. It’s very important for Greece to develop a meticulous and detailed plan of action tailored to its unique needs. When the last four months the Greek authorities increased the number of border guards in the Greek-Turkish land border, the number of arrests of undocumented immigrants dropped significantly. The completion of the 10.4 Km long fence will also help to stem the influx of illegal immigrants. The operation Xenios Zeus brought a noticeable improvement at least in the center of Athens, it has to be expanded throughout Greece. For 2013, Greece has already received more than €150 million from the EU to tackle its illegal immigration. It appears that there’s political will, there’s EU funding, there’s a detailed plan, all it remains to be done is to execute that plan and get illegal immigration under control.
JAWOHL!
That 150 million would be a lot better spent on assisting people in keeping a roof over the head and food on the table than assisting Germany to keep it’s territory free of “undesirables”. For that is what this is all about, and 150 million is a drop in the ocean and a total waste in that respect. The only political will being shown here is the willingness to spend a fortune on setting people up against each other in order and maintain the exploitation of all of them while they are fighting each other.
Germany needs to learn to respect PEOPLE, of any race, religion and skin colour for the human beings they are, instead of using the potential ABILITY of these people as the single yardstick for deciding whether they are worthy of becoming factory fodder in Germany or not. It is not just “illegal immigrants” that are being abused in this fashion.
EU policies have created a most disastrous levels of unemployment in the Southern periphery, including Greece. Germany has opened recruitement offices in Greece, Portugal and Spain, but only recruits “qualified” people, meaning people with higher education, and pays them peanuts. Of course, compared to nothing, peanuts look very attractive…
That policy is directly responsible for the “brain drain”, very similar to what Ireland experienced in the 60s and 70s. Germany, and the EU in general, not interested in ordinary Joe Soap who hasn’t been given the opportunity to get a higher education, and are quite happy to let him/her stay behind and get exploited as cheap labour in totally the de-regulated labour environment of the Southern hemisphere.
High time you start looking at things for what they are, the total manipulation of the many by the few. The difference between the illegal immigrants and the vast bulk of the unemployed in the Southern Periphery is one of semantics only. They are all treated as disposable items, useful only if there is an opportunity to make money out of their misery. And the propaganda machine is in full swing, diverting the attention away from the reality of things. As you “truth-teller” are the living proof of…
The EU also needs to put an immediate halt to manufacturing and selling of weapons to the countries the immigrants mainly come from. That way they wouldn’t have to run for the lives…
The twelve articles of xenofobic behaviour?
How about trying to find out why these people leave their home countries in such vast numbers and then spend all the money you suggest spending on eradicating those reasons instead of once again enriching the death-merchant arms and security dealers of this world?
Now that would be money well spend, without people once again enriching themselves at the cost of somebody elses poverty.
It would also show a level of humanity that would be an example to the world instead of Greece lowering itself to the pathetic levels of self-centred, shameless inhumanity the world has fallen to.
Greece is indeed in a bad way, but not because of immigrants. In fact, the immigrant problem is in reality not a Greek problem, it never was, until Greece got lamped (Schengen and Dublin 2) with the problems Germany, France, The Netherlands and other so called civilized countries have with sharing their wealth with those who have less.
Of course while conveniently forgetting that a lot of their wealth is generated by exploiting those very same people.