Kilometre Stretch: Asylum Applications

Transient Population Dept: Those are the duelling dynamics of Greece in its debt throes: A brain drain replaced by the unskilled and desperate, according to The Star. Greece is not welcoming. Less than 1 per cent of asylum applications were granted in 2010, the lowest rate on the continent. Newcomers without papers have 30 days to move on and aTHENS Foreigners arrive. Nationals leave. For decades, Greece has been the gateway to Europe for illegal immigrants, the land that beckons from afar to a restless, transient population, if only as a penetration point into the continent. Ninety per cent of undocumented migrants caught trying to enter Europe come through the country 128,000 crossing the border last year, more than 40,000 of them via Turkey, which is why a fence is being built between the neighbour nations along a 12-kilometre stretch that diverges from the Evros River. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.