Feature: Greek Aegean island striving to handle huge inflow of immigrants

A line of people with worn out faces is formed at the entrance of the Police station in Chios, a Greek island about 200 km northeast of the capital Athens -- they are undocumented immigrants, waiting patiently to be given documentation allowing them to go free for a while.

"I come from Turkey," a young man told Xinhua showing a Turkish banknote.

For over two years now, ever since the fence at the Greek-Turkish border of Evros was constructed, the influx of immigrants from the East to Greece has shifted dramatically towards the islands of the eastern Aegean sea.

Chios is a short sea passage to the European Union, opposite Turkey, 8 km in a straight line. It is one of the islands which have seen traffic increase exponentially, with more than 6,000 immigrants rescued at sea last year and more than 5,000 in the first months of 2015 up to early May, according to the island Police.

Because of the deteriorating situation in Syria, the majority of those who arrive on boats via Turkey, are Syrians. Other nationalities include Iraqis and Afghans, the police sources said.

"They sink their inflatable boats once there is a Greek Coast Guard vessel in sight, since they know that we will rescue them," Christos Fragkias, deputy chief of the Chios Port Authority said. But, when a trafficker sails with them, they reach the shore on harder-to-sink polyester boats.

With the sharp increase of undocumented immigrants, there is a shortage of law enforcement force in Chios, said Fragkias.

"We have asked for about 15 people more, you might think it is a small number but it would help a lot. Right now 90 percent of our work is illegal immigration but the Coast Guard has a wide range of responsibility and our work now is just exclusively limited to this," Fragkias said.

Due to the ongoing conflicts in the wider region, the number of undocumented migrants and refugees reaching Greece has tripled in the first three months of 2015 compared to that of last year. Greece estimated that should inflows continue at this rate the debt-laden country will receive 100,000 undocumented migrants and refugees this year.

"Traffickers are a big problem, they are organized in networks stretching from Syria to Greece through Turkey, and, considering they get 1,500 to 3,000 dollars per person to bring them to Greece, you realize the size of this business," Andreas Damiris, Police Director of Chios, pointed out. "Most of them are finally arrested," he assured.

When rescued, immigrants are transferred to a sheltered camp in the area of Mersinidi, some 8 km north of Chios town, where the "identification" process starts. Syrians get a 6-month renewable duration permit in Greece, while all other nationalities get a one-month permit with the possibility of renewal for one more month.

This results in many of them stating Syrian citizenship to get a longer duration permit, but, usually, they stumble on the "screening" and "debriefing" police procedures, which enable them to verify the countries the immigrants originally come from.

As not all countries have embassies in Greece, sometime the Greece police have to travel to their the immigrants' claimed origin countries to verify their identities, said Damiris.

Mersinidi, which has been operating since 2001, looks like a proper detention camp, even though in most cases at the moment they stay there roughly for two days, with procedures accelerated due to the massive influx of immigrants in the past two years, according to local authorities.

"The center at Mersinidi can only accommodate 120 people, so they had to find an extra place," Natassa Strachini, a lawyer who is also a volunteer with "Lathra?", a local activist group trying to help immigrants and refugees, said.

"There are times when I have seen Mersinidi so overcrowded, there were perhaps 300 plus people crammed together," she noted, as she walked towards a new makeshift camp, only set up in early May. The site is next to a graveyard, where large tents with beds are waiting for the next wave of people arriving on the island in search of hope.

"We don't have enough beds and toilets. The food is not good. We want to leave here," a male migrant claimed to be from Algeria told Xinhua from behind the fence of the center, waving a loaf of bread.

Despite the surging numbers, asylum seekers in Greece are extremely few, as, according to European legislation, they are entitled to seek asylum in one European country only, and they prefer to reserve this right for their destination country, usually somewhere in Northern Europe. And those that do apply, have to wait for months for their request to be examined, caught in the claws of heavy bureaucracy.

Still, most Northern European countries don't seem ready to adjust their migration policies towards accepting larger numbers of immigrants, offering thus some relief to the entrance countries of the South. Only after recent tragedies which took place in the Mediterranean -- with massive loss of human lives -- there appears to be a reheating of the relevant debate.

"But the future of these people still remains uncertain -- once their permits expire, they are considered illegal, here and in Europe," Strachini remarked.

"In our group, we promote the idea that no person can, in fact, be illegal. Hopefully this will resonate with European societies too, some day," said the lawyer. Endit