Immigrants have helped increase Greece’s population, which would have started decreasing by now because of a negative birth rate. Their contributions prop up the pension and health systems. Their work keeps the fields cultivated and brings in the harvest. They have helped build the infrastructure, which was in place for the Athens 2004 Olympics and the other projects that have changed the face of Greece. Immigrant women look after the young and the elderly, allowing both parents to enter the work market (thus saving many an old person from abandonment or institutionalization).

Bank statistics show that immigrants are beginning to save more than the average Greek. Today children of immigrants are entering university as the first generation to be born in Greece and to have received all their schooling here. Mixed marriages of Greeks and immigrants are routine. The country, which knew nothing of multiculturalism, is finding its footing, and the Greeks appear to be learning to tolerate and accept other cultures, albeit with many problems still to be solved.

In all, the country received an infusion of young, active people at the time when it needed them most. But it has been a rocky road, because of the sheer number of immigrants, who came in a massive and sudden influx after Communism in the region collapsed. Greece, whose membership of the European Union and NATO had insulated it from the woes of its Balkan neighbors, was spectacularly unprepared to deal with such a challenge.

Before the flood in late 1990, when the hardline Communist regime of neighboring Albania collapsed and the border all but disappeared, Greece had hardly any immigrants at all. Today, Albanians make up the majority of immigrants, but there are many from other countries in the region as well as from Pakistan, India, and so on.

Part of the reason Greece was unprepared for immigrants, and kept them waiting more than 7 years before even beginning a legalization process, was the fact that it is Greeks who, since time immemorial, have been leaving the rocky land and hard islands of home to seek opportunity elsewhere. Very few came here seeking opportunity.

In addition, Greece’s public administration was never quite up to coping with the needs of Greeks, and now it had to deal with a sudden influx of about a million people, equal to a full 10 percent of the native population.

It took many years before a horribly unwieldy and incompetent legalization process began, whereby immigrants would get temporary residence and work permits, allowing them some semblance of normal life. Even now, this process is an endless tangle of red tape, but the immigrants have been making the best of the opportunities the country offers them. They are working, their children are getting an education, and they are either establishing roots in Greece or sending substantial amounts of money back home.

The main problems that arose from the mass immigration were a sense of insecurity among many Greeks, especially because of a widely reported increase in violent crimes such as murder. The numbers were relatively high for a country with a very low murder rate. It was also a shock to have to deal with a very large number of young men, almost all of whom were unskilled, roaming the countryside, looking for work or other forms of opportunity.

Many problems were caused by the lack of legalization, which allowed many unscrupulous employers to pay immigrants a pittance and not insure them, thus depriving locals and legal immigrants of work opportunities while exploiting the newcomers. This has been mostly dealt with now, both through legislation and through the demands of the market -- immigrants are either getting what the law demands or setting their own demands for more.

Everything looks positive right now, thanks mainly to a generally laid-back attitude by the Greek public and state agencies, but mostly because of the very strong desire by the immigrants themselves to get ahead, to work, to study, to succeed. The problems that will arise will be related to the fact that Albanians and Bulgarians who make up the bulk of immigrants come from neighboring countries, causing concern that one day sizable communities may begin to push an irredentist agenda, as has happened repeatedly in the Balkans right up to this day. The day the immigrants begin to unite and to demand further rights is the day we will see how welcome they truly are, or whether the local population merely tolerated them because they were useful.

As for emigration by Greeks, that will resume when the economy takes a downturn, or when young Greeks who have studied and would like to seek opportunity elsewhere decide to try their luck in another European Union country or further abroad. Either way, the huge movement of people across the globe has not left Greece unaffected and will continue to change the country in every way, inexorably.