Greece has announced Monday, January 30, 2012, that they will be building a 13 foot, 6 mile long fence with razor wire on the top along it's border with Turkey, to prevent illegal immigration, and estimated to be finished by late September of this year. Thousands of illegal immigrants cross the border from Turkey into Greece every year, sometimes using Greece as a "gateway" for traveling or immigrating to other countries in Europe as well. This has become a major immigration crossing due to the number of deaths occurring by crossing the Mediterranean sea. The fence will also be equipped with night vision cameras providing real time footage to a new command center watching the border. Greece is one of the 26 European nations in the Schengen Area whose external border controls are not within the zone because of the fact that Turkey has not yet signed the Schengen Agreement. However, because of the agreement, Greece is required to maintain it's border controls. While the Greek Public Order Minister Christos Papoutsis went to the border villages to announce the building of the fence where over 40 people protested stating that the fence is a violation of human rights and should not be built during a time in which Greece is experiencing a severe financial crisis and high unemployment, as the cost of building the fence is estimated to be over 4 million Euros. Although riot police stayed near by, there was no violence that occurred during the protester demonstration. It is said that Turkey's government does not oppose the border fence and Greece is already receiving emergency assistance at the border from the EU border protection agency called Frontex. Even so, the EU has not supported this project and deems it "a waste of time" and "pointless".
By putting up this fence, Greece is potentially causing more harm than good. Many refugees flee their countries in order to escape danger and seek safety. Refugees are coming from places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan, and North Africa, including Algerians, Syrians, and Moroccans. Greece is possibly violating human rights, by rejecting refugees, and they could end up creating faltering international relations within the EU. Greece is already having issues with refugee costs in handling cases and getting them approved, and they are trying to push refuges into other nations which is going to cause a problem in refugees getting to other nations and thus causing more deaths and refugee hardships, violating EU law. They are also preventing economic growth by keeping them out, and during this time of their financial crisis, loosing money and producing no economic gain is the last thing they need. They could also end up seeing more deaths on the border than they are now, by either creating violence resulting in death or injury related deaths of people trying to find alternate routes or climbing the fence.
On the other hand, Greece is also seeing many deaths of immigrants and refugees on their border already. People are having to cross the Evros river that flows along the border, causing many deaths from hypothermia and drowning. So, in turn, putting up the fence could prevent many of those deaths, saving more lives than causing deaths. Overall, though, the cons in this case over take the pros by a long shot. Greece is not be supported in this decision because again, they are potentially preventing refugees from finding safety, violating human rights and UN law, preventing their own economic growth, and possibly causing hardships for themselves and people in countries around the world. This is a growing global issue relating to not only immigration and migration, but potentially also human rights.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/world/europe/greece-to-build-fence-on-turkish-border-to-curb-illegal-immigrants.html?_r=1&ref=immigrationandemigration
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57372954/greece-to-build-anti-immigrant-border-fence/
http://euobserver.com/9/115161
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