The number of people seeking asylum in Greece is rising rapidly. The most recent statistics I could find on it was the increase from 2017 to 2018, from just shy of 39,000 to almost 65,000 refugees, a 57.8% increase. A graph from the same source demonstrates the trends from 1990-2018. It hit a low in 2010 at 1,440 refugees, but between 2011 to 2016 there was 285.1% increase, going from 1,573 in 2011 to 46,427 in 2016. This is almost 286% in just five years. No government could anticipate and act on a crisis that fast. Greece especially couldn\u2019t, given their recent and ongoing economic crisis. They owe a lot of money to a lot of people, and while the EU is being rather patient about Greece repaying its debts, Germany loaned a lot of money to Greece and was against the easing of Greek debts that the International Monetary fund was suggesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know a few people who have visited Greece in recent years. One of these people went in 2018, and one of these people went in 2020. They both say the same thing, how there was such an air of desperation in the people of Greece. Pickpockets lined the streets, hoping to get money because they couldn\u2019t find work. Beggars, scammers, and muggers were everywhere in Athens, you couldn\u2019t walk down a single street without encountering them. Refugees lined up for miles, hoping for a food handout that would end up being inedible anyway. The person who went in 2018 described the atmosphere as that of a decaying country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The refugee crisis is absolutely not helping their situation. Greece simply does not have enough room for all of these people. They want to begin increasing deportations by the thousands, introducing closed refugee detention centers, and so much more. Human rights activists are against this, but the simple fact of the matter is that this influx of refugees is killing Greece, slowly but surely. This begs the question: Where will these refugees go now? And to that, there isn\u2019t yet an answer. As the conflict in Syria is ongoing and impacting the countries around it, they can\u2019t go back. But if Greece won\u2019t take them, who will? To travel across the Atlantic to the Americas would be far, far too risky for even the most desperate of people. Asia is a tempting bet, but they would either have to make a long, perilous sea trip around Africa (or through the Red Sea, controlled heavily by Yemen and Djibouti) or go over land across the entire shatterbelt. Those are also incredibly risky decisions. This is why refugees from Syria or other Middle Eastern countries choose to go through Turkey to Greece or another neighbouring country in the first place. With that option gone, there is nowhere else to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The number of people seeking asylum in Greece is rising rapidly. The most recent statistics I could find on it was the increase from 2017 to 2018, from just shy of 39,000 to almost 65,000 refugees, a 57.8% increase. A graph from the same source demonstrates the trends from 1990-2018. It hit a low in 2010 at 1,440 refugees, but… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4355"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4356,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4355\/revisions\/4356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}