Photo: Vasilis Vifidis
However, our country has proved to be particularly hospitable and I have examples. During his stay here, an illegal immigrant is treated for at least two years in public hospitals, free. This means that the Greek taxpayer pays for him while he himself pays to use health services. This is unfair and bad for the economy. In addition, every child of illegal immigrants who goes to kindergarten benefits from the Greek educational system free until secondary education. These costs are huge, we are talking about many millions of euros. However, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations and the European Union neither recognize them as a development aid nor consider them as parameters that have contributed to the collapse of our economy more than anything else. This is unfair. It is not right for the hospitality of a country and its society to be a reason for it becoming a scapegoat for the international economic crisis. Today, all say that Greece is guilty, but nobody asks how much money it has spent all these years for military equipment, because it was not protected against the threat from Turkey. Nobody asked how much it cost Greece to stop the immigration, which aimed to reach Central and Western Europe and no one supported it as was necessary in this direction. We are obliged to present these problems without any hostility or racism. I also believe that the children of immigrants who live in Greece and integrate smoothly into the Greek educational system should be able to integrate into society. However, this is something quite different from giving them the right to vote and Greek citizenship, which the government of George Papandreou tried to introduce. This is a call to all illegal immigrants to come to Europe through Greece. This policy is wrong. Even in ancient Greece, this right was given to people who became part of the culture of the host country, respected its laws, spoke its language and acknowledged its history. I think it should be true today too.
In their analysis of the long-term course of the Greek economy, large foreign banks do not exclude the possibility of serious social collapse hitting Greece. How far is New Democracy determined to go to prevent something like this from happening?
Look, when technocrats decide the fate of a nation, using only their mind and ignoring their soul, they take that particular society to deadlock with mathematical precision. I believe that whatever accusations are made against the politicians, they hold the solution in their hands. The problem is primarily political rather than economical. Politicians are the ones who must find the balance between what should be done and what could be done.
We have to protect our social structure, to protect equality of opportunity, social mobility, not to widen the gap between rich and poor. The larger this gap becomes, the greater the risk of giving rise to injustice. It is precisely this that fuels the protests of people against power, and finally they themselves pay for it.
Therefore, I think it is the responsibility of New Democracy and all other parties to put an end to the brutal greed and computational logic of financial institutions, whether we are talking about banks, international management centres or economists - technocrats who do not understand what it means for a family to cope with a budget of 500, 600 or 1,000 euros.