How much further? from matthias wiessler on Vimeo.
Just click on the link above to watch it, don’t be deterred by the large “Sorry”.
Dublin’s Trap: another side of the Greek crisis from Bryan Carter on Vimeo.
You should definitely watch these two films if you want to see the human side of the immigration problem and get another perspective than the dominant racist, xenophobic, simplistic and short-sighted ideology and rhetoric.
Immigrants are streaming into Greece looking for a better future, abandoning their own countries because it is impossible for them to live in them anymore — a decision many Greeks, young as well as old, are too considering at this moment. It is not Greece they are after specifically, it’s the European dream. Much to their dismay, Greece not only proves not to be much of a hospitable place at all (hello, Χρυση Αυγή), it actually forbids immigrants to leave for other EU countries and in may cases go back to where they came from; this is in accordance with the Dublin II regulation which states that individual member countries are responsible for examining applications for asyllum by immigrants. This of course puts Greece in a dire situation compared to, say, Germany or Denmark, since of course it’s situated at the very borders of the EU and has to take care of countless more people.
Wouldn’t it be great if in a spirit of solidarity every member state had to take care of its fair share of the immigrants that land in the union’s borders? Now there are 4, maybe 5 countries that take in the most people. This sum divided by 27 would make things much more manageable. But is manageabality the desrired outcome? Is solidarity a desired stance? Apparently not.
Bottom line: it’s not the immigrants’ problem — we live in a globalised environment and no-one can control or pretend to limit the movements of entire populations: it’s the official European migration policies that smell of foul injustice and Greece’s willingness to follow them. Of course it would: these policies are perfect for creating collective scapegoats; scapegoats it has conveniently found in the faces of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants.
At this point in time, with Greeks deep in economical, political and ontological crisis, politicians knee-deep in shit but still doing their best to bring the country to an even lower point for their own questionable boals, and Europe having targeted the PIGS as responsible for a systemic problem, BOTH the Greek status quo and the European elites benefit from creating a targeted, marginalised, unsustainable immigrant influx. If you have lots of immigrants, impoverished and humiliated on a daily basis, you have the perfect mix for crime and insecurity to rise which in turn breed hatred within the resident population; just the right conditions for people to avoid seeing the real problems and point fingers away from the real culprits. It’s a win-win situation for all but the citizens and the immigrants themselves of course.
As long as Greeks point their little fingers to the immigrants, conveniently blame them for everything and anything, claiming back the moral and racial superiority which were the only contributors to the self-respect which was robbed from them, and avoid looking at the reality which has been put in place by the government and the EU, the problem will only get worse. As long as Greece itself happily remains a scapegoat for all of the EU’s planned and structured abnormalities and injustices, there won’t be a solution. In fact, you should keep in mind that some “solutions” to problems are designed precisely in order to not end but prolong or even intensify the problem they’re supposed to rectify.
Unless, of course, we get the SURPRISE! Mihaloliakos so chillingly promises us in the second video were he ever to come to power (skip to 48:50). This was before Golden Dawn became a parliamentary party, mind you. Before a lot of the disgusting developments of recent months.
