as is above, the standard of life in greece is very good. If you look at things such as the HDI (the human development index) Greece has a score of 0.926 (out of 1) in comparison to turkey 0.345, Uk 0.935, Germany 9.67 you can see the difference. Greece is included in the top 10 % of richest nations in the world, and its people are among the richer minority of the globe.

Stop moaning. Your views that greece is “poor” are more fitting to the 1940’s than now. Even in the 50’s 60’s and 70’s things werent that bad, only as bad as in like the UK with strikes and stuff.

(1) Greece employs one person, in the former Ministry of Public Order, to administer the asylum process. There is no shortage of money to finance more jobs, because of the massive fees imposed on residence permit applications. Instead, that money is given to IKA and to fund IMEPO [the alleged research centre attached to the INterior Ministry] We are talking about many millions of Euros per year.

(2) THe number of recognised refugees in Greece is so small, that the state cannot even be bothered to count them. The state awards short-term status, and leaves most refugees to fend for themselves. As far as I can tell, most have become illegal immigrants after a decade or so of living in Greece.

(3) Greek politicians never do anything until they are threatened and humiliated. Basically, they are the laziest in Europe and need a good kick up the ***. The way forward is through public demonstrations, lobbying at the international and European levels, dragging them through all the courts…

There are some very dedicated people who are working on this issue but they have limited success in the face of a disinterested government. In my capacity as a blogger, there is also very little I can do other than keep writing about the issues in the hopes of stirring the waters a little.

If anyone has any suggestions or ideas of how we can help bring the subject more prominence I would love to hear from you. Also, if anyone has any suggestion of lawyers, organisations or anyone who could help mehran or many others, could you please let us know.

Perhaps the only thing I can suggest is that we start a campaign for fairer asylum procedures and post to as many blogs as we can. Especially to Greek blogs which gain more attention from the people who might be able to do more. I will start thinking about that and see what I can come up with, if people think this is a good idea ?

The question then arises how is the Greek government going to find the money to pay for housing asylum seekers and the rest. Some money has purportedly gone missing but no one can provide hard evidence of this, and whether the money that has gone missing for asylum seekers, is any more than all the other money that has gone missing for other programs. At some point people have to rely on empirical evidence to make decisions rather than sentiment driven or political driven hyperbole.

It is okay for non-Greeks demand more money for asylum seekers but it will be the Greeks that will foot the bill in the future. Those non-Greeks will simply fly away to another country.

Government spending is almost out of control here and the EU is not very happy with increasing government debt when it comes to Eurozone members and is asking for balanced budgets from member states.

Deviousdiva:To be honest i don’t think we’ve established anything.I’ve said i would be interested in data about the allocated funds for asylum seekers in Greece, but still haven’t seen any.One unfounded accusation about stolen money and now we take that as a fact?

I also know what you mean Xenos about a certain mentality but this really brings up issues for me in that people tend to classify the working class as ignorant and backward. It’s a matter of language and choosing our words carefully. Do you know what I mean ? Words are powerful things and I believe we must always question our use of certain stereotypes and generalisations. I have been thinking about this issue a lot recently in terms of ableism and ageism which I have been discussing in other places.

Anyway, let’s get back to the issue. How can we move forward on the asylum issues that affect so many people who are seeking a better life here ? Obviously the system here is not working. The lowest asylum recognition in Europe. Other countries in Europe refusing to send asylum seekers back to Greece (under the Dublin agreement) because they will not receive fair treatment here. The rights of asylum seekers are being undermined and ignored. This is the problem. What can we do about that ?

We have established that Greece receives money to process applications of asylum. That money has disappeared or has been stolen. The state has to be held accountable.

The sad thing is that there are poor people in Greece, even Greeks, but nobody is interested to talk about them.

He had a LCD plasma wide screen TV in his front room, as well as an X-Box 360, a video phone, a CD master system.

another woman refused to work as she said “she quite comfortably lives on state benefit” her son had a 3G phone and an MP3 player…

Yes it does

Most poor people in the UK wouldnt be able to afford a pc let alone have the internet on it.