Article regarding illegal immigration in Greece...

[Prokomenos]

Attempting to argue about the illegal immigration in Greece and Europe, someone immediately feels the "Simpligads" threatening to crush him: on the one hand "antiracism" with the whole network of repressive mechanisms it has developed ("progressive" journalists and politicians, criminal law, "non governmental" organizations etc.) and on the other hand the real pressure of people who go through the problem and are indignant, looking on every rational approach as insufficient and incapable of solving the problem.


The problem of illegal immigration in Greece is not a question of principles or ideology, but a policy issue, if we assume that there exists a structured national state. If there is a state, then there are borders too. It is known that three are the elements which define the existence of a state: the existence of definite territory, the existence of people living on this territory and the existence of power exercised within the boundaries of the territory and for the benefit of the people. And if there exists a state, then the legal distinction between a native and an alien is absolutely legitimate and founded on our Constitution. Therefore any legal and legitimate policy exercised within the boundaries of the Greek State should aim at the service of the short, medium and long-term interests of the Greek people.

Taking the above as a basis, the mapping out of an immigration policy is elucidated: does immigration harm or benefit the interests of the Greek people? This question, as it will be made clear further down, does not have a negative or positive answer, but rather needs quantitative and qualitative approaches, i.e. it can not be answered with "yes" or "no", but by asking "how many" and "who". Beyond this point, a sequence of "antiracist" myths - arguments unfold, which aim at convincing on the one hand that "the immigrants are good and useful" and on the other that anyone who speaks against mass immigration is a "racist" or a "xenophobe" at least.

The "antiracist" arguments are set out as follows:

1. "The illegal immigrants are not to blame for the increase in crime"
   In a recent poll of the "Eurobarometer" the Greeks are labelled by the European inventors of racism, as "the most xenophobe people" in Europe, because they argue by more than 80% that "the foreigners commit more offences than the average Greek".
   Unfortunately for the Eurobarometer, this judgement of the Greeks is accurate: without arguing that all the illegal immigrants are criminals, though they are all offenders of our law as they illegally enter, stay and work in our country, the data of the Ministry of Public Order reveal that, while the illegal immigrants make up approximately 10-12% of the population, they commit 36.3% of the murders, 31.5% of the robberies, 27.4% of the procurement offences and 58.2% of the smuggling offences (crime data for the first five months of 1999).
   Therefore the illegal immigrants, and this is a fact, commit proportionately more crimes than the Greeks and aggravate the crime indices. The "antiracist" reasoning, after its demolition by the statistical data, usually falls back as follows:
2. "Indeed the illegal immigrants commit more crimes, but this happens because they are poor, non-integrated, outcasts etc."
   These arguments echo rather discredited anticriminal policies. In addition, they shift the initial question "is illegal immigration to the interest of the Greek people?" and divert it to "now that illegal immigration took place, how will we handle it better?". This is deeply undemocratic, since it presents a violation of the law as a fact that should be legalized. Moreover it is part of a certain political reasoning lately developed, mainly from the ruling socialist party, to consider everything as non-reversible: non-reversible our accession into a Federal European superstate, non-reversible our accession into the European Monetary Union, non-reversible the illegal immigration, non-reversible the occupation of Cyprus and so on. Fortunately we all know, especially in Greece with our history of thousands of years, that everything can happen and everything is reversed. What a great thing is historical forbearance! It gives the nations a different sense of time and their potential.
   
3. "The illegal immigrants do not cause unemployment, because they do jobs that Greeks don't do". Here there are two erroneous positions: the one is expressed with the slogan "Every immigrant worker is an unemployed Greek", the other with the above argument. The truth is that, according to a survey of Dr. A.Sarris, Economics professor in the University of Athens, for every 5 immigrants, 2 Greeks lose their jobs. This survey was published on the Sunday Eleftherotipia newspaper on 18-11-1998. A detailed analysis of its data, as well as crime data, has been done by Yannis Kolovos in the "Hellenic Lines", issues 8, 11 and 19.

1. 
   So this "antiracist" argument is on the one hand erroneous and on the other hand unsupported. In addition, the pre-existing legal framework, had the provision and possibility to assess the real needs of the Greek economy in foreign labour. Because the employer looking for labour, submitted an application to Organization for Labour Employment (OAED), which, if it didn't have the labour for the satisfaction of the application, allowed the calling in of foreign labour.
2. 
   If this procedure was followed, then on the one hand we would have had legal entry and work in our country for the foreigners and on the other hand the needs of the Greek economy in foreign labour would have been ascertained in the most secure way.
3. Today however with the way the illegal immigrants enter Greece, the Greek workers suffer from the unfair job competition as the wages fall, the illegal immigrants accept to work uninsured and the job market disintegrates. If the idea behind the tolerance of this kind of immigration is to create a global job market, where the wages of the worker in Alma Ata of Kazakhstan and Ulan Bator of Mongolia are the same with the ones in Athens, then, apart from the utopian and unfeasible of the case, the way to be done is not to ground down the labour conditions in Greece. Moreover we should not forget that Greece is the European country with the highest percentage of unemployment and the highest rate of people living under the poverty limit.

However similar with the above arguments are heard for the Insurance Funds ("if we legalize them, then the Insurance Funds will be rescued with their social security contributions"). Such scrappy approaches leave us literally speechless: how can responsible politicians or managers of public insurance funds talk so? Have they taken into account the cost of hospital and medical treatment provided for free to the illegal immigrants for years? Have they taken into account the cost for confronting the crime caused by the illegal immigrants (police, courts, prisons, deportations)? Have they taken into account the cost for the free public education the illegal immigrants enjoy in Greece without being taxed? Revenues cannot be estimated without taking into account the expenses.

Moreover we ought sometime to realise and take into consideration the geopolitical position of our country. Greece is neither Belgium, nor Denmark or Switzerland. It is located at the gates of Europe, bordering with Asia and the Muslim world to the East, while to the North it borders with the Balkan countries, which are almost all in great political instability, facing conflicts with national and religious dimensions.

Today, Paris is surrounded with suburbs occupied by gangs of young immigrants, where law and order have been eliminated. The situation is indeed a great problem for France and Paris, however it is not a problem of national security. This will not apply for Ioannina, Florina, Thrace or Athens. Such a turn of social clashes, especially with immigrants coming from countries bordering and having national disputes with Greece, will not be a social problem, but a threat to our own national security.

All the above should not be mistaken as defending a "zero" immigration policy, but on the contrary as supporting the mapping out of a rational immigration policy. Rational immigration policy means that the Greek state has to decide how many and who immigrants it is in need of.

Since there are no rational arguments in favour of accepting mass illegal immigration, then why is there such a tolerance? Why is the law, calling for the deportation of all illegal immigrants, not enforced?
Here the "antiracists" having lost any rational alibi, make up a humanitarian argument: "they are poor people, struggle for a pittance, let us, a historically hospitable nation, give them what we can".

I admit that this is an argument which does not leave me cold, which should not leave cold anyone. However has the Greek State such a wealth, the Greek society such a strength, that is abundant and can give out? And if we have to give out wealth, then what has priority? The support of the Albanian illegal immigrant or the truly likeable Afghan refugee, or the support of the Greek unemployed, the unmarried and unemployed Greek mother, our poor, suffering and sick fellow-countrymen?

On the basis of the existence of a Greek state, this shocking indeed humanitarian argument, will again be answered in favour of our hard-hit and helpless fellow-countrymen and not in favour of the hard-hit and helpless foreigners. I wish Greece had solved its own problems so that it could solve the problems of other nations. However such a target is far off.

So the "antiracist" arguments prove to be irrational and pseudo-humanitarian. If the "antiracists" wanted to be honest, they should have unmasked themselves and revealed their true ideology, i.e. they should have revealed their true role, that of the servants of Globalization.

Let me clarify what I mean. The basic principles of the existing Greek State arise from the Constitution itself: "all powers emanate from the people, exist for the people and the Nation" (Greek Constitution, article 1, paragraph 3). The State is national, is structured, has borders and the distinction between nationals and foreigners is a legal distinction with an essential content, which is recognized by our own Constitution, which either speaks about "Greeks" or uses the words "each" or "all", when it refers to rights enjoyed by all found on Greek territory, and not only by Greeks.

All these sound self-evident and indeed are for the overwhelming majority of the Greeks. So, even the recent socialist law for immigration lays down a series of actions for the entry of a foreigner in Greece, the green cards and the work permits, and prescribes deportation as a penalty for the illegal entry in the country.

The "antiracist" organizations conduct themselves as if there are no borders, as if there are no states, as if there are no nations. This is not what happens, it is what they want to construct: a world without borders, without differences. They want to construct a multicultural pulp, where the only characteristic of a person would be his/her consumer capability. The ideology of the New Left is not far off from the ideology of international Capitalism.

The "antiracism" of "non-governmental" organizations conceals not the legitimate struggle to stamp out racial discrimination and the condemnation of racial violence regardless of the national or racial group it stems from. It conceals the struggle to abolish the national borders, the national states and by extension the national cultures. It conceals the new utopia of Left: a world without states, without differences, without religions, without poor and rich. The old Communist utopia dished up in a new form.

There exists no rational argument which can support the principle "no matter who or how many come, they are welcome". Such arguments, conceal the intention to construct "another" world: a world where the nation will have lost its political significance, where the culture will be a personal affair, where a global state will guarantee human rights, where nationality will not be determined by birth, but will constitute a politically insignificant dimension and will be chosen, if chosen, "freely".
The previous utopia of the Left, Communism, was paid dearly by the people with tens of millions of victims. I hope that we will manage to avert the new utopia of the Left, the universal state, before it is too late. The great Russian culture, the culture of Dostoyevsky and Chaikovsky, the Mariinski ballets and the Summer Palaces, Rahmaninov and Tolstoi, Chehov and Ahmatova was nearly wiped out after 70 years of "Soviet freedom" and today the girls of the Russian people are prostitutes in the white-slave market of the Texans.

Today all the patriots, irrespective of their political origin, irrespective of whether until yesterday they belonged to the Right or to the Left, ought to realise that havoc hangs over "the Holy of the Holies": fatherland, national consience, Hellenic culture.
Illegal immigration is not but one more policy for the imposition of the New Global Order, the New Totalitarianism: they will also use the European Union, the Commission's orders, the subordination of our Law to the EU Law, the abolition of our national currency. However illegal immigration is the most decisive, the most permanent national disaster. Because if the economy, the currency, the institutions, the Law or the State are ruined, they can all be reconstructed. Provided there are people, nationally cohesive. But if the people are lost, then any future, any prospect, any reversal potential is lost.
So is there racism in our days? Of course. The racism of "antiracism", the racism against the Greeks in Greece, the racism against the dominant national communities, all over the world. But there is the hope notwithstanding, the hope springing up through resistance, with one way or the other, all over Europe: the resistance of the patriotic movements which, despite mud-slinging, libels, repression and restrictions on freedom of speech, continue to exist, to resist, to grow. Like us. The Hellenic Front.