Migration is an element that can be used for the benefit of the ageing societies of many European countries, adding to the existing workforce and, thus, strengthening the economy.
– Gianluca Rocco – Chief of IOM Greece
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) of the United Nations being the main institution for the implementation of the “humanitarian” policies of “integration” of refugees in Western societies, can only complement and XRISONEI the barbaric and warlike policies of prevention and exploitation of migrants. The ultimate aim of political “integration” is for migrants to be exploited as cheap labor (Minister Notis Mitarakis recently said “there are people in the labor market, especially in the agricultural sector”,) a minority of migrants will be faced with the various requirements of “humanitarian programs’, while the majority of migrants will have to go through the hell-like camps.
A key pillar of these well-publicized policies is the “HELIOS integration program”, designed to provide recognised refugee financial support ( a very small amount) to cover their rent for a period of (just) 6 months. The program has various bureaucratic requirements and obstacles (AFM number, address, bank account), which is impossible to meet the time frame given.
About 19,000 recognized refugees have been registered with HELIOS since July, with only about 4,400 of them having new rental contracts since June. The new annual apartment contracts that are signed are with the rent on being average 450 euros per month. At the same time, other refugees and migrants are being in the blackmailing condition of not having a home, with the complicity of both the Greek state and the owners real estate, who usually refuse, on xenophobic and racist pretexts, to rent apartments to migrants. Due to the small financial support given by HELIOS it is common for beneficiaries to share the apartments with more people, for example 10 people staying in a house in miserable conditions to be able to cover the rent. Many refugee families entered HELIOS homes after the start of the school year, with the result that their children not admitted to schools, as they face difficulties with registration and vaccination.
IOM through HELIOS admits that “there are not enough homes needed” to house the 10,000 people who have been evicted since May (from the ESTIA program) or the hundreds fleeing Moria. Indirectly, therefore, IOM admits the lack of access to the right to housing and therefore the granting of asylum is equating to homelessness.
Several months after the first arrivals in Victoria Square (and while earlier it had a “typical” presence) the IOM has disappeared, abandoning them to the appetites of all kinds of cops. Migrants report that after the fire in Moria, no one appeared to help them, although an announcement was made that apartments will be rented out. At the same time, IOM members at the new camp Kara Tepe (successor the hell of Moria) in Lesvos, and handed out leaflets to the refugees (who are trying to make ends meet with rain water running in and under their tents), which advertise the “Voluntary” return of migrants to their country of origin of each. This is not the first time we have seen such cynicism of the “humanitarian” collaborators of the nationalist government.
In the face of these destructive policies of the Greek state and the “warm” hospitality of “outraged” racist locals, migrants are called to face daily violence and racism, the devaluation of their labour as an opportunity vocational training ”, their ‘integration’ as institutional exclusion, in a society that has already rejected them. For our part, we stand with migrants in the face of the escalating war against them , calling for multiethnic joint struggles of the exploited classes for:
Papers, Healthcare, Financial Support, Housing, Labour Rights and Education for all.
Gathering on Friday 23.10 at 11 oclock at the offices of the International Organisation for Migration (we are meeting at Illioupoli subway station)