A majority of Greeks, nearly six in ten, have stated that they view reducing immigration as a “high priority” for the government in a poll of public opinion.
A total of 58 per cent of Greeks say that refusing levels of immigration should be a high priority for the government, while another 23 per cent said it was a medium priority.
Just five per cent of the respondents of the poll, which was released by YouGov last week, said it was not a priority for them at all, newspaper Ekathimerini reports.
The poll was also conducted in other countries and found that 44 per cent of French, 43 per cent of Swedes and 42 per cent of Hungarians and Italians all thought that reducing immigration should be a high priority for the government.
Canadians were the least concerned with reducing immigration numbers, according to the survey, and Canada was the only country where a majority of respondents did not view reducing immigration as a high or medium priority.
Immigration control has been an important topic in Greece for years as the country was the main entry for over a million migrants to the European Union during the height of the migrant crisis in 2015 and early 2016.
In 2020, a poll found that 76 per cent of Greeks were in favour of the tough border control policy enacted by the current conservative government and over eight in ten were concerned about Turkey’s attitude toward the situation along the two countries shared border.
Since 2020, the Greek government has made further moves to strengthen the border, including reinforcing border barriers on its northern land border with Turkey and deploying more personnel to the border region, completing a border barrier last August.
While other migrant routes to the European Union grew last year, such as the route to the Spanish Canary Islands and the central Mediterranean migrant route to Italy, the route to Greece has remained at low levels in 2020 and 2021 according to UNHCR statistics.
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