Die Zeit: 12,700 immigrants in 2018 returned from Greece to their homelands

The report notes that in 2018 more than 12,700 migrants returned home from Greece, according to Greek police. Just in December almost 800 left Greece for their homelands.

Reimbursements were made in cooperation with the International Organization for Migration (IOM). IOM offers migrants a return journey under the protection of security authorities. In fact, they are helping them with an amount of 500 to 1,500 euros to start their new life in their own country.

Most - as mentioned - returned to Albania, Iraq, Iran and Georgia.

 In addition, the German newspaper reports extensively on recent criticism by NGO Oxfam on the living conditions of refugees and immigrants in camps, as well as in identification and reception centers. Oxfam criticized the living conditions of pregnant women, unaccompanied children and survivors of torture in Greek hotspots. Hundreds of vulnerable people are in the slums of the eastern Aegean islands, largely left to their own fate, according to the Oxfam report. There is a shortage of medical staff and hot water. In addition, the winter rains have turned their camps into marshy swamps.

Oxfam, as noted in the German publication, has asked the Greek government and the other EU countries to meet their responsibilities. Two times more immigrants live in Moria than the camp can accomodate, while stressing that Greece should not be allowed to face this challenge alone and that asylum seekers should be resettled in the member states of the EU. But the international community has for years been unable to agree on binding quotas for the sharing of refugees in all countries. The spokesman on Immigration for the Left Party  in the German Parliament, Giokai Akbuulut, accused the federal government of inaction and asked for the hotspots (on the Greek islands) to close .