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Since the summer of 2015, Greece has been the object of an invasion, organized or not.  Hundreds of migrants from different continents have been arriving in the Greek islands on a daily basis. Some days, their number approaches 3,000. Most of these people do not have documents. They speak little or no foreign language, but declare strong will to settle for good in Europe. Many observers and political analysts describe them as refugees who are trying to escape from war, violence or political persecution in their home countries. From my personal conversations and meetings with migrants, EU officials, Greek politicians and ordinary citizens, I realized that the main force behind this invasion is poverty, misery, lack of educational opportunities, and a total loss of hope that change is possible in their home countries.

Officially the largest group of people who have arrived in Greece since the begining of the crisis declare themselves as being from Syria, Libya and Iraq. However the Greek authorities can not verify this as most of the migrants do not have any documents. “Only God knows who I am”, a migrant told the Kathimerini Daily. The majority of these people come from countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia. Technically, there is no war in these countries. “We are broken. After more than 20 years of war in Afganistan, the country is in ruins, there are no jobs and no future,” a young man from the Asian country told me few months ago. Thus, the main reason for the migration turned out to be the low quality of life with zero hope to change for the better.The situation in the home countries is atrocious. In her documentary “The True Cost,” the activist and executive producer Livia Firth shows that women in countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia and Sri Lanka work for 12 hours in the cloth industry for miserable wages and in an extremely unhealthy conditions. In comparison, the wages in Europe are much higher and the working hours much less. Even in Syria, the real problem is not the war. A research published in the Greek financial news website capital.gr insists that for more than 10 years before the war, the country suffered from a devastating drought. As a result, many farmers lost their jobs and were forced to move to the cities to work. This research concludes that, even before the war, the Syrian society was quite segmented, and each segment had little understanding and tolerance for the problems of the rest of the population.”Even before the Islamic State came, life under the Kurdish forces was very hard. There was no wood to burn,” a woman from Syria told The New York Times.The migrants themselves do not disagree with this conclusion. I am not aware of any who had expressed desire to return home after the end of the war. On the contrary, they want to settle in the West. And they are picky. According to the statistics provided by the Greek Ministry of Migration, only 2% of the migrants who arrived in the country actually applied for refugee status in Greece. The eloquent majority of 98% want to go to the richest countries of the EU with Germany and Sweden being their first choice.
For me, it is not a surprise that Europe is reluctant to respond. What surprises me is that Europe fails to communicate the reasons why it hesitates. Therefore Europe leaves room for opinions like The Letter to the Editor of the New York Times by a Syrian-American from California. She insists that the US should welcome all the migrants because they are refugees and this is their human right to receive asylum. Well, traveling abroad is not a human right. It is an activity strictly regulated by the so-called visa policy that can differ from country to country. Working in a foreign country is not a human right either, and it is even more strictly regulated.
To make a long story short, we are not in a period of a Third World War. The local wars in Syria, Iraq and Libya themselves cannot produce the huge migrant wave we have witnessed these days. The real reason for this invasion of migrants is the inbalance of the distribution of the world’s wealth. I do not posess the solution to the problem, but I believe the world leaders are in charge of this issue. As far as the short-term actions are concerned, the reality is not simple either. But at least the direction is clear – stronger military and diplomatic pressure to end the war in Syria and Iraq and more financial and human aid for the camps in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.