Police in Greece conducted a massive immigration operation earlier this month that resulted in thousands of arrests. In an email interview, Gabriella Lazaridis, a senior lecturer in the department of politics and international relations at the University of Leicester, discussed Greece’s immigration crackdown. WPR: What is the current situation in terms of trends in legal and illegal immigration to Greece as well as Greek immigration policy?
Gabriella Lazaridis: Since the beginning of the 1990s, Greece has changed from an emigration to an immigration country. In the first quarter of 2012, some 64 percent of all irregular migrants in the European Union entered through illegal border crossings (.pdf) from Greece, according to FRONTEX, the EU border agency.