Talk:Immigration to Greece

Quality
it seems this article is without any update for more than a decade. it has some points but still it is outdated. It says almost nothing about the migrant crisis after 2015.Beickus (talk) 22:13, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

This article is very poor. I have tried to improve it, but Greeks always think they know better and do not need to listen to anyone else. So it remains as an amateurish effort, despite my attempts to give it some real substance. SO BE IT. The Greek POV succeeds simply by wearing everone else down, and pigheaded stupidity. Xenos2008 (talk) 14:10, 31 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Not to be puzzled about, as you put it:"That's characteristic of Balkan peasants, which is what most Greeks are, and there is no possibility to have a polite rational discourse. You will influence Greek policy only by humiliating and abusing the people who support it, in my experience." Since most Greeks are pigheaded stupid peasants--Factuarius (talk) 19:00, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

this Sux —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.62.76.106 (talk) 23:07, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Article Revision Review
Overall, excellent revision of the original article. With some proof reading for gramatical and neutrality errors, and expansion on certain issues, your article will really be top quality. Some of my specific recommendations are:

-Be mindful of neutral language throughout the article- phrases such as "immigration policy reform is slow and mismanaged at best" should be reworded to reflect a more neutral approach to the subject. Additionally, I would consider deleting the first sentence of the section titled "Migrants to Greece" in order to maintain neutrality. -Be careful of too much repetition - both of ideas, and gramatically. For example, it is pretty well established that migrant workers make up a large portion of the Greek population, so be mindful of repeating variations of that more than necessary. Also, "Migrant women to Greece in particular are of note, and are particularly vulnerable to exploitation" is grammatically repetitive, so make sure to proofread to allow for better flow. -The section titled "Migrant Women in Greece" is very interesting, and I would be very interested to see soem expansion on certain points that you only touch briefly on, such as the vulnerability of domestic workers, sex trafficking, and other forms of exploitation experienced by migrant Greek women. -I especially liked how you divided the section discussing factors of migration into 'Push Factors' versus "Pull Factors". -Finally, I would suggest ending the article on some sort of section discussing the future of Greek immigration - what improvements might be made?

Again, overall great job! I look forward to reading the final product. Hmccann (talk) 15:53, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Article Revision Review 2
I agree that the revisions to this article were excellent. I agree with Hmccann that proof reading would be useful for grammatical errors. The article is readable as is, but in some sentences like "Migrants are so plentiful that in a society with negative natural population growth, it has become the sole source of population increase overall." it is not clear what the pronouns ("it") are referring to. I was impressed by the depth of information, and it does seem very carefully researched and thought out. A second recommendation I have would be to try add visualizations or graphs for some of the numbers of immigrants over time. I think this would make the article accessible to a wider audience and allow surface information to be gleaned a little more easily, since the writing can become somewhat dense at times just due to its nature (legal information or statistics, for example). I feel the point of view could be somewhat more neutral, but your points are well referenced, and it is pretty good already. For example, the sentence "Others come to Greece to stay. No matter how long their stay in Greece, migrants are excluded from the majority of Greek society and face political, social, and economic marginalization." although well sourced, reads to me a little too strongly. These are just my two cents -- great work so far!

NSDhaliwal (talk) 21:47, 6 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Hmccann and NSDhaliwal, thank you for your comments. I'm glad you enjoyed reading this article and gave such thoughtful ideas for revision. I have gone back through and particularly looked for instances of grammatical mistakes or repetitive sentences/ideas. I also made sure to clarify in instances where I had an ambiguous "it", like the one that NSDhaliwal mentioned. In general, I tried to make sure the whole thing flows better, and broke up a lot of longer sentences into smaller chunks. I also went through and tried to make sure that I was more neutral, or that if I had a biased-sounding comment (like a lot of places in the section on Greek immigration policy) I either changed it or backed it up as critics' opinions of the law. Neutrality was a hard thing at some points but I tried to make it more neutral. As far as visualizations go, I haven't added any yet but I remember some really great graphs and charts from my research, and will go back and try to find some that fit well with this material; it will definitely be a helpful representation of some of the more dense data. Thanks for taking the time to carefully read and review; it was incredibly helpful! Rachel.m.mitchell (talk) 21:05, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Problematic lead part
It appears that the introductory part is wrong, since according to [], in countries such as Spain the percentage of immigrants is higher. As for the non-EU immigrants the percentage is one of the lowest.Alexikoua (talk) 17:32, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

extreme bias
"When immigrants began flooding into Greece in large numbers for the first time in the 1990s, the Greek government was not properly prepared for the management and control of so many migrants. Until 1991, legislation on immigration dated back to the 1920s. [4] In 1991 the first Law on Aliens (Law 1975/1991) was enacted, Greece's first attempt to deal with the massive influx of immigration. [10] This law was exclusively concerned with restricting migration into Greece and discouraging the entrance of foreigners into Greece. The only way a foreigner could work in Greece was to obtain a residence and work permit before arrival. Any attempt to enter the country illegally under Law 1975 could be punished with imprisonment ranging from three months to five years. Additionally, migrants were not eligible for any kind of welfare schemes or first aid, apart from in the case of an emergency, unless they have a residence permit. [12][4] [13] This law was a failure and did nothing to curb illegal immigration and resulted only in the expulsion of massive numbers of illegal immigrants throughout the 1990s, particularly of Albanian migrants. [4] Throughout the 1990s, nearly 2 million migrants, the overwhelming majority of which were males, were deported, with nearly 200,000 deported annually on average; over two-thirds of them were Albanian. [12][10]

It was only in 1997 that two Presidential decrees introduced the first regularization program in Greece. Presidential decrees 358/1997 and 359/1997 were ill-designed, mismanaged, and made it difficult for migrants to be successfully regularized, but they laid the first foundations for an institutional framework in Greece that tried to actually deal with immigration in a way that went beyond deportation. [7] A New Law on Aliens introduced in 2001 concentrated on short-sighted regulation of migration through restrictive legal migration channels, and a larger regularization program and more comprehensive policy framework to deal with immigration in the long term. [7] There were some benefits to this law, such as the right to be informed in a language one understood while in detention, and obligatory nine-year education for migrant children. [10] However, certain aspects of the law, such as the need to renew visas every year, neglected the needs of local labor markets to fill positions in a relatively short time, and almost completely ignored the fact that many immigrants would still try to migrate illegally. [7] Lawful residence of migrants who had not already been in Greece before 2001 was very difficult under this law. [10] The immigration law was also still discriminatory regarding citizenship acquisition and made distinctions between co-ethnic returnees and "foreigners" or "aliens". [6] In 2004 the government decided to issue permits of two-year duration, as opposed to one-year, which cut down on time and monetary costs of applying for a visa, but there were still many issues with regularization. [7] The small number of work permits, their limited duration, and the general policy orientation of the Greek government was not conducive to creating sustainable immigration policy. [11]"

This section appears to be extremely biased in favor of a pro immigration point of view. This certaintly needs to be rewritten in a much more neutral tone. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.104.112.41 (talk) 14:22, 28 September 2014 (UTC) No. Right wing political theorists emphasise soverignty and control of borders. Centre theorists are more ambiguous about the contribution of immigrants, regular or otherwise, to the economy and society; while left theorists are more likely to emphasise the artificiality of borders and their deleterious effects on society and economy. So, your comment is basically a right wing one. The article is fairly neutral in its tone, as is appropriate for an encyclopedia.37.6.241.101 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:09, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I concur. Political theorists understand the right to control immigration as a fundamental aspect of sovereignty. Politicians and electorates express a belief in their right to control the border, in Greece as elsewhere.   This article fails to reflect this reality.E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:00, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

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"Public reaction to immigration" section is very biased and untrue
"Greece is considered to be the most xenophobic country in the EU" First of all, that's racist by itself and has no place in a wikipedia article. Second, that statement seems to be announced for every single EU country I have researched about.

In Greece, right-wing extremists that attack immigrants are almost universally hated. When an anti-refugee rally was held, it was attacked by pro-refugee. Many Greeks take personal initiative to help refugees, even at the risk of their lives

If we are the most xenophobic country in the EU, why did we willingly take in as many refugees?

This article keeps quoting some Gabriella Lazaridis person. All quoted statements she declares are biased half-truths. Yes, there are people who look down on immigrants. But they are looked down upon from most Greeks. It is true that labor rights are worse for illegal immigrants, because the employers are taking advantage of the fact they're unprotected by the fair labor standards.

Greeks have a long history of coexisting with other cultures, both abroad and at their homeland. The only exception is the 20th century which imposed all minorities expelled from everywhere. The people were never asked if they wanted their neighbors gone. We don't believe our country is homogeneous.

Relations with Albanians are very complicated. There are some stereotypes against Albanians that even some Albanians I've met believe them to be true. But the same goes for the Greeks themselves. Some people do have bad preconceptions against Albanians, but many Greeks will defend Albanians against those people. Relations with the Turks, are in fact, less strained. Sure, there are people with nationalist hatred against each other, but many others get along very well from both sides.

Some Greeks are extremely sensitive about racism and have condemned the entire country as racist because of a minority of people and individual incidents. Gabriella Lazaridis seems to be one of them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.107.151.158 (talk) 07:08, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

The "Gabriella Lazaridi" person is one of the leading writers on immigration into Greece, and a tenured professor in a UK university. The fact that your personal opinion does not coincide with that of an established authority on the topic is of no interest to anyone else.37.6.1.2 (talk) 01:19, 3 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Since you seem so convinced about Lazaridis' credentials (and indeed she is amongst the happy few specialising in the arcane field of immigration and racism in Greece), then it is just plain silly to use such outdated and cherry picked literature (2002!). Her contribution, along with that of others cited in the article, might have been valid during the early 90's but is almost outlandish for 2016. Even Lazaridis herself edited a much more nuanced volume back in 2011 (Security, Insecurity and Migration in Europe) meticulously recording the improvenents in the perception of "otherness" by greeks as well as the diversification of an ever more often positive discourse re immigrants, refugees, migrants end ethnic minorities. The situation is of course far from ideal vis a vis the sui generis Greek provincial conservatism (which is by no means predicated on racial, religious, essentialist and exceptionalistic grounds as it so often happens in other parts of Europe) and that despite a misguided and almost antiquated sense of superiority shared by a good number of modern-day Greeks. Thankfully recent years have witnessed the emergence of a more liberal discourse both in the official as well as in the popular level. Otherness is not negotiated through the well trodden populistic paths dominating the public sphere of other EU countries (e.g. Poland, Slovakia, Austria, the Netherlands, the U.K. to name but a few). A massive, well organized xenophobic or racist movement has yet to appear, whereas the recent surge of refugee and immigrant flows have sensitized rather than terrify the society in Greece (with certain notable exception of course).  BTW the part about Greece being the most xenophobic country in Europe is utter nonsense. I have still to see anything remotely similar to the likes of Orban, Fico, Katzhinski, et al. (Golden Dawn freaks excluded). The racist and xenophobic paranoia engulfing most of Eastern Europe, Great Britain, Austria and many more EU states (on a national level mind you) has had little impact here. Such attrocious and shockingly popular transmutations of neo-fascism, far-right extremism, racism, xenophobia, supremacism, neo-colonialism and cultural & intellectual attavism represented by Pegida, AfD, SMER-SD, Niklot, PWN-PSN, NOP, Partij voor de Vrijheid, UKIP etc.  have not taken root in Greece. This type of moronic, non-contextualized sweeping conclusions infesting the article at its present state is really rich... I'll come back with more up-to-date literature as soon as I find some spare time. This thinly veiled cherry picking of sources has gone unchallenged for quite sometime and it has to stop.Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 08:34, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

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About the 7.1% immigrant population of Greece
I am not sure, but I think this includes only the immigrants who have enterred Greece legally. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Melaneas (talk • contribs) 13:54, 15 June 2017 (UTC) Melaneas (talk) 13:57, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

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