Today, with the beginning of the holiday season, rumor may have it that the guardian of the travel business people is Hermes, Fleecer of Tourists, but his father is still Zeus, and, as protector of strangers, he is far more ancient, though not quite all-powerful any more.
When the number of tourists visiting annually is reaching that of the country’s total population, the demands on hospitality can be taxing, but much more so when the country is being invaded at the same time by hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants.
Political and economic refugees on the move today, it is said, are going to have a greater impact on the future than any other burning issue today. Greece certainly has more than its fair share in this dilemma. The number flowing in from north and east, relative to Greece’s population, is twice that of any other EC country.
The number of these immigrants is between 400-600,000. The real statistics may not be there, but the people obviously are. Pontian Greeks from the Soviet Union became a fixture of street markets selling carpets and baboushka dolls five years ago. These migrations were well organized. Privileges were given, as well as legal status, housing, jobs and orientation centers.
Far smaller in number but more desperate now are the refugees from Anatolia, mostly Kurds, but also members of forgotten Christian sects who survived under the toleration of the Ottoman Empire but now the victims of ultra-nationalism. These have no privileges at all. They are deposited on uninhabited, waterless Greek islets by Turkish ferrymen charging their passengers high prices for “transportation to the West”. Twenty-one refugees marooned on the rock of Strongyli near Kastellorizo on May 17 were rescued and are being supported at public expense. This is a weekly occurence.
On the same day, it so happened, an Albanian girl, 18, broke her legs jumping off a train in northern Greece in order to avoid passport inspection. This Albanian immigration is by far the most serious today and accounts for over 200,000 refugees, less than half of which have legal status.
On May 17, Mr Mitsotakis addressed the visiting Albanian Prime Minister Aleksandr Meksi as follows: “Our country has provided succor to the first wave of refugees from Albania. We have stood by these people and continue to be willing to help them withstand difficulty… We consider Albanian citizens of Greek ethnic origin a link of friendship and not a pretext for friction.’
“We want,” he concluded, “as many workers as our economy can afford and we want to sign an agreement, but the condition is that Albania must control its own border.”
This was all very nice to say, but Mr Mitsotakis may have been carried away by kindness to strangers, for the government made a hasty disclaimer afterwards, warning that reports of all immigrants being granted legal status were exaggerated. Perhaps it was remembered that the main refugee center in the country is, awkwardly, in Lavrion, an industrial mining center suffering 70 percent unemployment.
In any case, Mr Meksi would not commit himself to a border agreement, perhaps because he couldn’t, it being a desolate, mountainous area all but impossible to patrol. Along here, migrants who have flourished in the south arrive in vehicles laden with electrical and kitchen appliances and color TV sets which are caravaned over the mountains by packs of mules. After a visit they come back for more.
Less fortunate, empty-handed migrants who are deported are back the next day. Those so fortunate as to have legal status as well as their families in Greece have the added problem of trying to support them at inflated prices with, at best, irregular work.
With the economy strained to the breaking point, and unemployment rising, the morality of employing migrants becomes complex, even when local Greeks are reluctant to do the same work. It has become patriotic therefore to employ Northern Epirots because they are Greek. The well-off suburban Athenian in need of a gardener imagines he can distinguish them as they stand in groups at street corners early in the morning looking for a day’s wage. “The real Albanians are sandy-haired, lantern-jawed and have a shuffling walk,” he explains. “Northern Epirots have black hair, are square-jawed, bright-eyed and have a quick, light step. They are one of us.” So he equivocates. Hospitality now becomes hazardous in urban areas. Destitution leads to crime: from housebreaks, handbag-snatching to prostitution and black¬mail, the traditional sense of security is vanishing with 22 percent of the inmates of the country’s overcrowded prisons being migrants though they make up only seven percent of the population. Yet seven percent is a huge number, and the present concern is that if the conflict in Bosnia spreads down into Kossovo, the wave of immigration will become an inundation.
It’s the old, atavist fear of invading barbarians from the north in modern dress. Hospitality becomes strained when it is imagined that Zeus Xenios himself may become a stranger in his own house.
