Galery

2

1

What should be done? Different things to the different categories of immigrants should be done. But first, I would like to say that it is too late. I feel great uncertainty and disappointment, because we allowed all this to continue long. First, the procedure for acquisition of Greek citizenship should be accelerated, especially for immigrants who are in the country legally and meet the legal requirements for that. The process has already begun, but now it looks more like a bicycle up the hill and the rider is gasping in an attempt to move forward but remains in the same place.

Second, the procedure for revoking the status of the legality of people who were rejected during previous procedures for legalization should be completed in any way. In Greece, as in other South European countries, the social integration of immigrants was based on the so-called "legalization". Some of them were legalized from time to time, to limit the number of illegal immigrants. This happened several times in Greece, Italy and Spain. The question lies in the fact that we still have a very large number of illegal immigrants in Greece today, which is equal to or greater than the number of legal ones. And new ones will be constantly added to them who are legal today, but due to inability to meet any of the requirements and mostly the term of service because of the crisis, they will lose their documents. I am familiar with the bill of the Ministry of Labour, which provides for a reduction in the number of working days. We should have many similar initiatives in order to solve the issues at least for the people who are already integrated and not to "throw" them rather than integrate them further.

I find two categories among the illegal immigrants. The first includes those who have never been legalized in any way, but from a social point of view they meet the conditions for social integration. Therefore, a social mechanism should be found for these people to be legalized at one point if they continue to live this way. This is something provided by the law, but does not apply because the government is not convinced that we should apply it.

The people who are in the country illegally and represent a critical mass that creates all the panic need to be registered. Thus we would find out who they are, how, where and under what conditions they live, what their health condition is, whether they have children and whether they attend school. If this does not happen I really have no idea where it could begin. Furthermore, if the government knows how many and who these people are, the state could decide to create a legal framework for legalization under certain conditions after a certain period of time or to establish an extradition system, which would be deferred until the moment when it would be possible to apply it.

All this, however, requires a lot of work, greater coordination and political will, and I am not certain of their existence.