http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/world/for-illegal-immigrants-greek-border-offers-a-back-door-to-europe-644831/
At the train station here, an unshaven man with a weary look leaned
against the brick wall of a building, taking in the morning sun.
He
said that his name was Zulifoar Baht; that he was 38, from Pakistan;
and that his train for Athens would not arrive until midafternoon. So
there was nothing to do but wait, along with a dozen or so other illegal
immigrants who had finally made it into Greece from Turkey, crossing
one of the most porous borders in Europe.
The 126-mile border
between Turkey, which is not in the European Union, and Greece, which
is, has become the back door to the European Union, making member
countries ever more resentful as a tide of immigrants from the Middle
East, South Asia and Africa continues to grow. Frontex, the European
Union's border policing agency, estimated that a vast majority of the
crossings in 2011 occurred at the Greece-Turkey border. Last year,
Frontex said, more than 55,000 people crossed the border, a 17 percent
rise from the year before.
The flow has raised tensions throughout
Europe, to the point where the top French official responsible for
immigration seriously suggested that a wall be built along the entire
border. In Greece, one person in 20 is estimated to be here illegally,
at a time when the country is sinking in debt, the far right is making
political gains and instances of knife-wielding vigilantes taking out
their frustrations on immigrants are becoming increasingly common.
Zarif
Bakhtyri, 28, a wiry, streetwise playwright and aspiring film director,
said he fled Afghanistan in 2006 after rankling the authorities by
writing and directing a play that criticized polygamy. Mr. Bakhtyri's
story is a familiar one -- making it to Greece, where he was jailed and
then released, then moving along a route that led him to Italy, Norway,
Sweden, and back to Greece in 2010 because it was his point of entry.
He,
like many others, has been trapped in Greece's backlogged refugee
system, the result, in part, of a longtime European Union rule that
stipulated an asylum petition must originate in the first country the
immigrant entered. That changed in January 2011, when the European Court
of Human Rights ruled that sending asylum seekers back to Greece could
infringe on their fundamental rights because the Greek system had become
so saturated and living conditions were so poor.
The increase in
illegal immigrants in Greece has created support for the extreme-right
Golden Dawn party, which has vowed to rid Greece of foreigners who enter
the country illegally. Even the country's mainstream parties have taken
a harder line, though the Greek government is widely derided as inept
in its efforts to police the border.
Athens is building a $7.3
million fence on the Turkish border to close off the short land crossing
between the two countries, but few expect it to stem the flow. In
rejecting a request from Greece to help pay for the fence, the European
Commission described it as "pointless."
The last hurdle to Greece
is the Evros River Valley, beginning in the north at the Turkish city of
Edirne, once the capital of the Ottoman Empire. To the south, on the
Greek side, farms sometimes abut barbed-wire fencing, with signs warning
of minefields along the dirt roads adjacent to cornfields. Villagers
along the border talk of immigrants emerging from the river, wet and
cold, as they begin their trek toward Athens.
But the last staging
area for most immigrants is really Istanbul, the teeming Turkish city
that is a magnet for those who have often walked for months through the
wilds of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.
Turkey has come under
criticism because of its liberal visa requirements, which make it easy
for immigrants to legally enter the country and then move on. Citizens
of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Syria and Iran, among many other nations, do
not need a visa to enter the country.
Once in Turkey, they share
crowded apartments and try to find work and save enough to pay smugglers
for false papers and passage across the border.
In the cluttered
cellar of a dingy Istanbul garment factory, Mustafa Mirzaie, 18, worked
with his friend Hussein Rezaie to repair a sink. Both are from
Afghanistan, a major source of refugees trying to make their way to
Europe. Last winter, they walked for 24 hours over the frigid mountains
of Iran into eastern Turkey. Now they do odd jobs to sustain themselves
until moving on.
"It's a difficult way, but it's the only choice
we have," Mr. Mirzaie said. "I'll work here and find a smuggler. We have
no choice."
Immigrants in Istanbul often find themselves stuck on
a financial treadmill, barely able to meet their basic living expenses.
One 17-year-old Afghan named Shamsollah lives and works in a basement
sweatshop. He says he will need about $5,000 for the next stage of the
journey, though he makes only about $250 a month -- just enough to cover
expenses.
"Istanbul is very big and very expensive," Shamsollah
said. "I have $1,500 now. But that is not enough for me. I don't want to
stay in Greece without money. There is no work in Greece."
Sitting
at an outdoor cafe recently in one of Istanbul's poor neighborhoods, a
smuggler named Mustafa talked about how he operated his business.
He
takes 16 people at a time by van from Istanbul to the border, where his
customers walk for an hour to the Evros River and then float across on
rubber rafts. He charges $1,000 a person for the three-hour journey. He
said he tells his clients not to fear being caught on the Greek side of
the border.
"I say to my passengers don't worry because they don't
want to deport them," he said. "They just want to register you and take
money from the United Nations."
Sometimes, though, the journey is
just too hard. There is a small but growing number of people who have
made it to Greece, but returned to Turkey.
Earlier this year, on a
windy day in Istanbul, Mustafa and Ali, two 17-year-old Afghan
refugees, stood shivering in a park on the Marmara Sea. They had made it
to Alexandroupolis but had run out of money. So they returned to
Istanbul.
Their only possessions were the shoes, pants and
T-shirts they wore. They had waited for hours for an Istanbul contact,
but he had not shown up. Without papers, they were afraid even to leave
the park and look for help.
And so they sat there, looking out on the sea, wondering what they would do next.
