Quest Greek Islands

The Landing Hub of Europe

With the Syrian crisis fueled by ISIS in the Middle East, an unprecedented number of refugees are fleeing Syria to the safety of Europe. So far this year an estimated 340,000 people have fled from Syria seeking asylum in Europe. Most of these people seek entrance into European powerhouses like Britain and Germany.

Their commonality is their starting point. Out of those 340,000 migrants, roughly 230,000 arrived to Greece as their gateway to the rest of Europe. Greece that is in the middle of one of its worst financial crisis in history is unable of coping with this problem.

With temporary concentration camps set up hastily in Athens and on various islands, with limited resources and funds, the well-being of many of these migrants is questionable at best.

One of the islands hit the hardest is the island of Lesbos. The island, city officials claim, can hold adequately 4,000-5,000 migrants. At this moment, Lesbos has about 25,000 stranded migrants seeking to go to the mainland and be either granted asylum or transported to mainland Europe, where they’ll seek asylum.

The migration problem that is hitting Europe this year is a tough one. For one, the country in which asylum seekers apply for asylum is responsible for housing them.

Secondly, before the application happens, all the migrants have to be recorded and classified as asylum seekers or illegal immigrants.

With unemployment being at all time highs in many European countries, these same countries are hesitant of accepting incoming waves of migration, leaving the Mediterranean countries like Italy and Greece to deal with them, some them, very poorly equipped to do so.