Asylum

The Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket) has halted the deportation of children to Greece after learning that asylum seeking children risk being locked up there for up to three weeks. Several weeks ago the UN refugee agency UNHCR asked all EU countries to halt deportations to Greece. According to UNHCR the asylum process in Greece isn’t legally secure. [via]

First of all, I must admit that I do not have a clear idea of how things are in Greece regarding immigrants and refugees as well as the relevant laws. I was in the subject 10 years ago when during my high school years I was involved in a EU school project to carry out a survey on the policies in Greece regarding refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants and compare it with the Netherlands. Back then the outcome of the comparison was at least sad. Nevertheless, today, I am not confident that many things have improved significantly or as much as they should have during this 10 year period. The aforementioned article, as well as a post in politikoblog.gr (in Greek only) made me wonder how Greece is dealing with the issue and whether things have progressed all these years. Judging from both, I think that there is still a long way to go (I’m being very polite here ).

I wonder whether Greece and Greeks have forgotten all the generations of immigrants and refugees that have left our beloved country during the past 100 years. It must be very rare to find a family in Greece not having at least one relative immigrated abroad. What have we learned from their experiences?

In addition, in the past 20 years, Greece has become the center of attention for many immigrants from the Balkans, the Middle East, Asia and Africa either as the holy land of their dreams for a better future or as an entry point to the EU. On the other hand, most of the other EU countries have been accepting immigrants, including Greeks, for the past 60 years (right after WWII when Europe was being rebuilt). What have we learned from them? How are we trying to avoid the mistakes that countries like the UK, Germany, France and Sweden (yeahp, they make mistakes too, even if they hate to admit) have made?

My poor thinking tells me that we ought not to repeat mistakes others have made in the past especially since we have the examples coming from both sides (immigrants/refugees and hosting/accepting countries).