Greece is making us look bad - Despite their economic troubles, most Greeks are welcoming refugees

ATHENS, Greece - More than 200,000 refugees fleeing mayhem in the Middle East already have worked their way this year from Turkey to Greece, site of the worst economic crisis to hit a developed country since World War II. About 100,000 illegal immigrants come each year from Mexico to the United States, which has 30 times as many people as Greece and a vastly more prosperous economy.

   So which country is witnessing the meteoric rise of an anti-immigrant political figure? Hint: It’s not Greece.

   It’s America, of course, where Donald Trump has shot to the top of the Republican presidential fold on an astoundingly nativist platform: Put up a wall between the United States and Mexico, deport anyone who is in America illegally and deny birthright citizenship to their offspring.

   And that’s not because waves of Mexicans have been sneaking across our borders to steal jobs and commit crimes, as Mr. Trump would have you believe. Illegal immigration declined with the recession of 2007-2009 and remains a relative trickle. As for Mr. Trump’s fear-mongering, undocumented workers are less likely to engage in criminal activity than native-born citizens.

   It’s been especially depressing to watch Mr. Trump’s ascent from here in Greece, which has an actual - rather than imagined - flood of newcomers on its hands. On the islands closest to Turkey, especially Kos and Lesbos, 33,000 migrants have arrived in the last month alone. Despite their own economic crisis, however, Greeks have aided the refugees in every way they can.

   Greece dispatched 60 extra coast guard officials to register refugees on the island of Lesbos, where an estimated 20,000 people were sleeping in streets and parks awaiting travel permits. The government also provided special ferries to transport refugees to Athens, where most of them will continue toward other destinations in Europe.

   In the wake of the debt deal signed earlier this summer, however, the government’s capacities are obviously limited. So ordinary citizens have stepped into the breach. Spurred by photos of a drowned Syrian child who was trying to reach Greece, vacationers in speedboats have rescued people cast adrift on the sea. Waves of volunteers have been providing food and clothing for refugees when they get to shore.

   To be sure, there have also been reports of young thugs beating refugees. And the far-right Golden Dawn party has tried to capitalize on the crisis, spreading a rumor earlier this summer that Muslim immigrants had defecated in churches on Lesbos. “We will do everything we can to protect the Greek homeland against immigrants,” the party declared in response to the defecation story, which was later exposed as a lie.

   As Greece braces for elections Sunday, however, Golden Dawn’s popularity has remained in single digits. Its leader has denied the Holocaust, which took the lives of an estimated 60,000 Greek Jews. Its symbol is a slightly modified swastika. And whereas Donald Trump wants to build a wall on America’s southern border, Golden Dawn advocates putting land mines around Greece to kill illegal immigrants.

   But Golden Dawn also helps to stigmatize anti-immigrant sentiment in Greece, in ways that might surprise Americans. If you scream about foreigners usurping the nation here, people might mistake you for a fascist. Back in America, you can be a frontrunner in a major political party.

   Of course, there are plenty of Republicans outraged by the bombast and demagoguery of Donald Trump. And not everyone who backs Mr. Trump opposes immigrants. Nevertheless, as a recent Washington Post/​ABC News poll confirmed, a large majority of Trump supporters come from two groups: people who lack college degrees and people who say that immigrants “weaken America.”

   They don’t. But immigrants provide an easy scapegoat for charlatans like Mr. Trump, who can blame all of America’s economic problems on them. Here in Greece, paradoxically, the economic problems are so profound and long-standing that most people know better than to pin them on the recent spate of refugees.

   They also know that most of the refugees won’t remain here for very long, thanks in large part to those same economic conditions. But the Greeks have tapped into a sense of charity - and of history - that Americans would be wise to emulate. Last week’s newspapers reported the death of Father Efstratios Demou, a Greek Orthodox priest who spearheaded voluntary relief efforts on Lesbos. Father Demou descended from ethnic Greeks who were transferred from Turkey to Greece in the 1920s, as part of the massive population exchange between the two countries.

   Father Demou “knows all about physical suffering,” one paper declared, shortly before the ailing priest died, “and his family has also known what it is to be a refugee.” Most Americans know what it is to be an immigrant, too, if they look back far enough. Maybe Greece can help remind us of who we are.

Πηγή: post-gazette.com