In a surprisingly article on euronews.com, archived here, we find out that actually uncontrolled immigration over the EU borders can actually become a problem sooner that you can say Ursula von der Leyen:
"Cyprus population is about 800,000 people. If we have 250,000 foreign people here, it means that 25% or 30% are foreigners. If we cannot tell them to go away because of the European Union policies, it means that in a year period of time, as they will bring their wives and kids, they are going to be more than a million. We would be turning to a Lebanon. We want to stay Greek Cypriots here in Cyprus", said Christakis Meleties, Head of Kokkinotrimithia Local Council.
They will be more than one million probably soon, but you have to take into account also the enlargement of their families by adding new babies born right there, in Cyprus.
"Everyone assumes that because most migrants have cellphones and smartphones and there's a lot of information that they know everything, but they don't, because the smugglers or people along the way will give them bad information, including the idea that if you have a child in Cyprus or in the European Union, that child is automatically granted EU either residency or citizenship, and this is not the case”, explains Elizabeth V. Kassini, Executive manager at Caritas Cyprus.
That's true, but it's also true that EU will not send them back in this situation.
However, reality beats the movie in a lot of aspects:
The Orthodox Church of Cyprus has a very clear point of view on immigration. It accuses Turkey of trying to alter the country's demographics.
”The majority of them (asylum seekers) have another religion (Islam - n.a.). This also affects our society. It is also the fact that we are a place with quite a few problems already, and we cannot be burdened with such a large percentage of foreign people coming here”, said Archbishop Georgios, spiritual leader at the Orthodox Church of Cyprus.
The country's Interior Minister, Konstantinos Ioannou, is pointing out to the solution. A solution that is hardly swallowed by the bureaucrats in Bruxelles, that have a completely different agenda (orders):
We strongly believe that we should combat illegal migration, because we think that member states should decide -under international law- who is going to cross their borders, and not smuggling groups and traffickers
Raising this topic in order to protect your country makes you automatically to be labelled right-wing supporter, xenophobic, racist, Islamophobic, etc. But for those 800k of Cypriots is becoming a matter of survival, in their own country.
