Greece has made an innovative proposal for taking care of their immigration problem coming from Turkey. Due to its geographical position, Greece has taken in most of the immigrants fleeing the wars in the Middle East. This has hit Greece’s already unsteady economy especially hard. Greece simply does not have the infrastructure or funding to take in all of these people. At the height of the Syrian Civil War, the island of Lesbos alone took in almost a million refugees. A new plan for deterring these immigrants from sailing to Greece and its island is a proposed barrier to be built off the coast of Lesbos. The cause of this drastic move could be because Greece will be undergoing a change in administration this March. Ekaterini Sakellaropoulou was elected to be Greece’s first female president this month, and will be sworn in on March 13th. Her predecessor, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, will finish his five year term at the same time. Pavlopoulos is most likely trying to finish his presidency strong, by fulfilling his promises to crack down on illegal immigration.
The barrier will be 2.7km long, and will be made of a net held up by floating 50 meter high pylons and will have flashing lights to alert approaching vessels. Amnesty International has urged against the plan, saying that this barrier will only make the refugee’s journey even more dangerous. Massimo Moratti, the group’s Research Director for Europe says, “The plan raises serious issues about rescuers’ ability to continue providing life-saving assistance to people attempting the dangerous sea crossing to Lesbos. The government must urgently clarify the operational details and necessary safeguards to ensure that this system does not cost further lives.” Even Greece’s own former migration officer, Dimitris Vitsas, has referred to the plan as “stupid” and stated that a barrier of this sort could never work to keep out asylum seekers. The plan is to have the barrier in place by late April of this year. All in all, it will cost about €500,000, and will be built by the military but with no military specifications. If the proposed fence goes well, there are plans to potentially extend it to 13-15km in the future.
I do not believe that this will deter refugees fleeing from conflict in the Middle East from coming to Greece or other parts of Europe. Turkey has the greatest refugee population of any state in the world, almost 4 million Syrians have flooded into Turkey since the civil war began in 2011. However, I can see why the Greek government would want to discourage any more migrants from coming over. The refugee camps on Greece’s Aegean islands are severely overcrowded with some having 44,000 people in camps only built for 5,400. These numbers give cause to why the camps are in such a horrible state. In the main camp on Lesbos, about 140 sick children are among 19,000 men, women, and children who can’t be taken care of due to overcrowding, which is probably the reason they got sick in the first place.