Greece rounding up and deporting imigrants

[Blackstar*]

Re: Greece rounding up and deporting imigrants

I'm glad Greece is being cut loose. Damn bright and out of order. They are well known to be among the biggest tax dodgers in Europe, but rather than put their house in order, they are harassing foreigners.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><span style="font-size: 14pt"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Black'">6 in 10 Greeks don't pay income taxes</span></span>
December 31, 2010 | By Katy Byron, CNN

More than 5 million Greeks did not pay income taxes for 2008, according to public documents released by the struggling nation's finance ministry.

More than six in 10 taxpayers earn less than 12,000 euros per year and are not required to pay income taxes under the Greek tax system, the press office of the Greek Ministry of Finance said Thursday.

However, <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-size: 11pt">there is wide speculation that many Greeks are not accurately reporting their income.</span></span>

Most workers and professionals earned more than 12,000 euros in salary in 2008, according to the data provided by the Finance Ministry this month. The average salaried income was 19,234 euros for taxpayers and professionals earned 29,569 euros on average for the year. More... </div></div>

[Stormmey]

Re: Greece rounding up and deporting imigrants

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: BlackStar</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I'm glad Greece is being cut loose. Damn bright and out of order. They are well known to be among the biggest tax dodgers in Europe, but rather than put their house in order, they are harassing foreigners.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><span style="font-size: 14pt"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Black'">6 in 10 Greeks don't pay income taxes</span></span>
December 31, 2010 | By Katy Byron, CNN

More than 5 million Greeks did not pay income taxes for 2008, according to public documents released by the struggling nation's finance ministry.

More than six in 10 taxpayers earn less than 12,000 euros per year and are not required to pay income taxes under the Greek tax system, the press office of the Greek Ministry of Finance said Thursday.

However, <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-size: 11pt">there is wide speculation that many Greeks are not accurately reporting their income.</span></span>

Most workers and professionals earned more than 12,000 euros in salary in 2008, according to the data provided by the Finance Ministry this month. The average salaried income was 19,234 euros for taxpayers and professionals earned 29,569 euros on average for the year. More... </div></div> </div></div>

How do they get away with not paying taxes for so long

[Blackstar*]

Re: Greece rounding up and deporting imigrants

They don't enforce their laws and as a poor European country, they get plenty European Union subsidies. More stringent fiscal justice should have been a condition for receiving subsidies, but it gone already...

[Wahalla]

Re: Greece rounding up and deporting imigrants

Didnt john wayne make a film about them?

There was a report that the White House is putting presure on the eu not to kick out Greece till after the us election. There willn be an increase in the dollar value when it happens.

[lonewolf]

Re: Greece rounding up and deporting imigrants


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">but rather than put their house in order, they are harassing foreigners.
</div></div>


<span style="font-style: italic">Putting their house in order means controlling immigration.The Greeks have lost control of the country. Immigration in all countries must be controlled.</span>



Special Security Report: Illegal Immigration in Greece and Domestic Security
June 11, 2011

By Ioannis Michaletos in Athens

The following Balkanalysis.com special report is the second in a series on new threats to Greek internal security system, following the previous report on organized crime in the country.

……….…………..

Organized crime, including narcotics and weapons smuggling and human trafficking, have expanded considerably over the past decade and have now become a central focus for the Greek security and intelligence services. The present report draws on data and information gained from informed sources in Greece, including police officials, intelligence service officers, coast guard command, and open sources such as Greek and foreign media accounts.

“A New Beirut”?

Recently the mayor of Athens provided an interview for the Los Angeles Times, claiming that “Athens is becoming a new Beirut,” meaning it is starting to face the same ethnic-based conflicts due to the multiplication of different nationalities characterized by conflict and internal strife.

However, the reality is different. All data provide the picture that Athens is becoming a 19th century European metropolis characterized by divisions of labor and social stratums between the super-rich, residing in exclusive zones in the city and “ultra poor,” living in desperate conditions in other locales, a typical stratification of London for instance during the mid-19th century and the disparities of income and standard of living between the West and East side.

<span style="font-weight: bold">One major indicator for this expanding sociological phenomenon in Athens is the mass immigration of unskilled illegal immigrants from Asia and Africa. These individuals, chiefly working-age males, are entering a city with no available vacancies to offer, and a situation that will deteriorate even further due to the ongoing “Greek debt crisis.”</span>

Organized Labor

According to reliable data from Athens municipal authorities, there are approximately 150 large and deteriorating buildings between Patission Avenue and Metaxourgeio Sreet, right in the center of Athens and close to Omonoia Square and Larisa Station, where 100,000 illegal immigrants are being literally stashed away.

<span style="font-weight: bold">They are paying organized crime leaders from 2-5 euros per day for “rent.” Authorities say that the leaders of these syndicates have actually bought the buildings and can thus shelter in them those who they have trafficked into the country, thus raising considerable income that it is not declared to the tax service</span>. Of course, such conditions are inhumane as well and in case of a fire or earthquake would lead to a tragic loss of life on a large scale.

<span style="font-weight: bold">A simple calculation shows that the human trafficking networks, mostly run by Greeks but also by Albanians, Syrians, Egyptians and Nigerians, make from 200,000 to 500,000 euros per day as ‘slum lords</span>.’

This is in addition to other sources of profit deriving from selling narcotics substances to the immigrants, or using them to sell products as illegal street vendors, prostitution or finding them manual labor- while taking from them a hefty daily commission.

The results for Greek domestic security and the rising levels of criminality in the urban environment is, as can be understood, becoming a heavy burden for the state system. A<span style="font-weight: bold"> Hellenic Police officer dealing with the issue for many years told Balkanalysis.com that “at least 75% of the night shifts in the Athenian Police Departments deals with crimes committed by illegal immigrants and the workload is heavy and quite expensive, costing tens of millions of euros per year for the arrests made, bureaucracy, damages done to police vehicles and state property and other expenditures.”</span>

Zones of Influence

The scope of the issue becomes even more compelling when one calculates that in 2010 alone, some 150,000 illegal immigrants entered Greece, almost exclusively from the Middle East, North Africa and the Indian sub-continent. Once employed in Greece, each individual is estimated as generating a minimum annual income of 10,000 euros for the organized crime networks (while being allowed to keep precious little for himself). In short, this makes 1.5 billion euros just from the newcomers (let alone those who have been in Athens for years).

It has become sort of common knowledge that organized crime kingpins in Greece have acquired hefty profits, along with political clout in order to continue their businesses. The Greek National Intelligence Service (NIS) produced a report in early 2011 that was leaked to the daily paper Ethnos, in which it stated that crime syndicates have been able to create pro-immigrant NGO’s, buy real estate and create “zone of influence” within Athens, so as to construct their ghettos and evade possible police surveillance. In addition, the intelligence report noted that organized crime groups have made the necessary “investments” by buying influence in certain sectors of public opinion, so as to neutralize opposition in many cases.

Troubling Numbers

<span style="font-weight: bold">A mid-2008 report on street crime from the Central Security Directorate of the Athens Police estimated that foreigners are responsible for 42% of homicides in the Greek capital, 43% of sex attacks, 30% of financial crimes, 33% of vehicle theft, 51% of armed robberies, 45% of sexual trafficking cases, 44% of burglaries and 30% of illegal possession of arms and explosives.</span>

<span style="font-weight: bold">Since then, it is widely assumed that the analogy has risen to at least 30% of foreigners committing crimes in the city, in parallel with the influx of a new wave of illegal immigrants from 2008 up to early 2011.</span>

Moreover, since criminal behavior within the immigrant community – including crimes occurring between the immigrant populations themselves – is seldom reported, the full extent of it has not been fully calculated in police reports. This means that in statistical terms, <span style="font-weight: bold">it can be safely assumed that foreigners are involved in almost 80% of street crimes in the city of Athens, and similar figures can be assessed for the rest of the country, especially in other major urban centers</span>.

Key Factors behind the Explosion in Immigration: New Legislation, Border Policies and a European Currency

Back in 1998, the Greek Ministry of Labor estimated that there were 800,000 illegal immigrants in the country and 200,000 legal ones. Since then, a series of laws has been passed by Parliament, with the purpose of issuing green cards for those working and residing in Greece for years. This noble-minded decision has had two far-reaching results.

First, long-resident immigrants from the Balkans and Eastern Europe started to assimilate further into Greek society, to an extent (though this has certainly not prevented some from still partaking in illicit activities).

On the other hand, however, these new and less restrictive laws were understood as a “green light” for the mass immigration of people from as far away as Bangladesh and Afghanistan into Greece.

Another three factors played a crucial role in exacerbating illegal immigration in Greece over the past decade. First, the introduction of the Schengen Treaty in 2000, which was hailed as a model for free border transit making life easier for Europeans, also changed perceptions among human traffickers. Greece was the weakest link, being the closest Schengen country in geographical terms to the Middle East, thus providing a great incentive for human traffickers to divert immigrants to Greece en route to Northern Europe, largely across the enormous land and sea border with Turkey.

Secondly, the introduction of the euro in Greece in 2002 meant that a ‘hard’ currency had arrived (compared to the old drachma). This presented yet another strong incentive for unskilled labor to immigrate en masse, and thus gain access to a hard currency to send back to relatives in their home countries. In parallel, this allowed for the crime networks to establish strong bases in Greece and exploit business opportunities in a “Eurozone country.”

The third major factor behind the rapid growth in illegal immigration to Greece was the urgent need to prepare for the Olympic Games of 2004. With huge infrastructure investments in excess of 16 billion euros required, Greece needed the temporary importation of thousands of construction workers. The image of Greece as a mid-sized Mediterranean country capable of organizing such a big event also enticed foreign businessmen – hardly all of them ‘legitimate’ – to seek a piece of the action in apparently booming construction, tourism and commerce sectors which, as we have seen with the current economic collapse, were not fated to last long.

Profiles and the Knock-on Effect to Professions

Nowadays the actual number of immigrants with valid documentation is estimated at 600,000 and the illegal population at being from 350,000 to one million people. By contrast, in 1991 less than 100,000 foreigners in total lived in Greece. The country holds the pan-European record for the increase of incoming immigration by percentage over this period.

Data streaming from the municipal authorities in the country indicate that 60-65% of the total immigrant populations are men, mostly aged between 20 and 50 years old. For the legal residents, just 8% have secondary education while 45% have primary level or no education at all. For the known illegal population, the vast majority have primary or no educational level at all.

The mass immigration movement has exacerbated the widening of the wealth gap between rich and poor, something that had already started to happen as mainstream Greek society grew more stratified and urbanized. The owners of shops, factories, farms or other services that employed immigrants managed to greatly reduce expenses and increase profits, as they avoided paying health insurance and other taxes, while unemployment for Greek manual workers and unskilled ones who could not ‘compete’ increased rapidly.

Although the immigrant population at the start of the boom was employed primarily in doing tasks that locals would not undertake themselves, that model has expanded. A sizeable number of immigrants have now either entered more specialized professions or, as in the case of illegal immigrants, sell untaxed and unregulated items in the streets or in makeshift shops, thus decreasing significantly the turnover of established commercial businesses, which results in unemployment for Greek employees in the country.

In<span style="font-weight: bold"> 2009, the then-minister of health revealed a report that stated illegal immigrants in Greece are costing more than one billion euros annually to the country’s public hospitals, not counting emergency services. Similar figures can be counted in other social services as well, since according to Greek law, the health and school system do not require any kind of payment from the immigrant population, which largely does not pay any taxes or social security contributions anyway.</span>

For more hit the link..

http://www.balkanalysis.com/greece/2011/...estic-security/

[Wahalla]

Re: Greece rounding up and deporting imigrants

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">2009, the then-minister of health revealed a report that stated illegal immigrants in Greece are costing more than one billion euros annually to the country’s public hospitals, not counting emergency services. Similar figures can be counted in other social services as well, since according to Greek law, the health and school system do not require any kind of payment from the immigrant population, which largely does not pay any taxes or social security contributions anywa</div></div>

So they dont have VAT in Greece ?

[mangoskin]

Re: Greece rounding up and deporting imigrants

looks like Greece is run like a 3rd world country

[Blackstar*]

Re: Greece rounding up and deporting imigrants

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Afghans currently make up the highest number of people crossing illegally, followed by Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and an increasing number of people from war-ravaged Syria, More... </div></div>Wonder what these countries have in common?

[Blackstar*]

Re: Greece rounding up and deporting imigrants

Let's see how Greeks like it when the door is slammed on them...
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">David Cameron 'prepared to halt immigration of Greeks into UK'
Prime minister says it would be in UK's interests to impose stringent border controls if Greece is forced to leave euro
More... </div></div>

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Greek party attacks British PM on migration remark
By Renee Maltezou | Reuters – Wed, Jul 4, 2012

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece's co-ruling Socialists hit out at British Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday, accusing him of insulting Athens by saying Britain could restrict the immigration of Greeks and citizens of other struggling euro zone countries. More... </div></div>

[mangoskin]

Re: Greece rounding up and deporting imigrants

what goes around, comes around for both of them - who colonise more places than Britain...
all the chickens coming home to roost