Migrants to Greece face the Golden Dawn

Maybe he is coming from Sudan, Somalia, Morocco, Afghanistan, the Phillipenes, or somewhere else where work is hard to come by, the family is struggling to survive and there are threats of violence at every turn. He decides to try to get to Europe, where he might find a job and could send remittances home. He pays someone thousands of his currency [what  he can spare] to be escorted across the ocean. The man escorting him pushes him off the boat hoping he’ll drown and not be ale to tell the police who helped him. Or, maybe he tries to cross the continental border, where there is 113 miles of fence to cross, a large portion of which is electric fence labeled only in Greek, and is also lined with mine fields which have been known to tear away limbs as if they were paper cranes.

Maybe this migrant man will make it to the shoreline of Greece, without losing a limb or his life (maybe he won’t). Unfortunately, he didn’t realize that he was entering a country where immigration policy, when it exists at all, is a labyrinth of paperwork and fees and qualifications that even the most legitimate traveller could not complete. He doesn’t realize that the cost of a temporary residence permit is 900 euros and proof in writing that his country is too violent for him to live in — and saying “Well, would I have come here if it wasn’t?” doesn’t mean anything — because who wouldn’t risk their life just for the sake of being a Greek.

So he finds a job selling high-end brand knock-offs on the street — where he has to run if the police are headed his way, but the tourists who buy from him are unafraid to be seen buying these black market items in the open. Or he works for a construction company that will look the other way when he can’t provide ID, but pays him half the wages of a Greek for the favor. He hunkers down in an abandoned building or in an apartment overflowing from the other migrants from his country or another — and he tries to save just enough to send home to his sisters or brothers or children.He hopes that someday he can make it out of Greece and into a country that allows asylum, allows citizenship, allows him to get a decent job and live like a human being.

He asks himself, who is a Greek anyway? — Citizenship in Greece is based on the jus sanguinis system, in which citizenship and the rights that go along with it (access to public services such as health care and education) are passed along by blood. Even more than that, “Greekness” is defined by a common history of very specific political experiences, a tie to a glorified ancient culture which is preserved only in its exclusivity (case in point: FYROM), and finally by religion which has defined Greek identity since the Ottoman occupation and remains a strong factor of Greek hegemony. Not only do immigrants face the impossibility of integrating into “Greekness” but their children, second generation immigrants, are not given the opportunity to become nominal, let alone cultural, citizens.

And then this happens. a group like The Golden Dawn arrives at his doorstep. A neo-nazi group, claiming that communism and globalism are destroying the world — that he and his “kind” don’t belong in Greece or perhaps anywhere else. He waits in a tiny room “…amid piles of fetid rubbish and human waste without electricity or running water” as “Dozens of protesters hurled stones and fireworks at the eight-storey building on Saturday night.”

This is the ‘freedom’ he risked his life for. The ‘liberty’ he hoped would bring food to the table of his family, and rest to his tired eyes. Everything he has seen of the world has been a violation of human rights. The moments of laughter, the stolen smiles, are tiny flecks of time scattered among days of hatred and violence. When will the world discover his worth?

In 1999, 146/1528 asylum seekers were approved, of those who even attempted the application process, which includes a list of evidence and documents nearly impossible to attain.  In the 1990’s 1/6 of the menial labor force in Greece was made up of migrants who are largely exploited because they are dependent on their employers to ‘look the other way’. Immigrants provide a large pool of cheap labor which politicians admit is “vital” to the Greek economy. Within the ‘guestworker’ model, these residents are a temporary part of the labor force and therefore do not require the same protection as citizens – in addition, they are accommodated informally (by being hired privately) which leaves them open to continuous exploitation, violations of their basic human rights, and instability. The U.S. faces similar controversy with a large population of workers arriving from Mexico, and the resulting resentment is also paralleled in Greece.

Greeks resent immigrants because they are occupying positions in the work force despite a large unemployed population. However, most Greeks would never take these lower class, laborious, subordinate positions themselves.

As a result, racism is prevalent toward immigrant populations — and is harshest against Albanian and “gypsy” populations who are perceived as Muslim or “godless” and therefore ‘lawless’ and unpredictable.

How can these issues be overcome when the human rights violations that occur are due to deeply rooted issues of identity?