- The state has a whole judicial and police armament to confront immigrants, and besides, it creates and finances non-governmental organizations or ostensible oppositionist organizations that manipulate immigrants in a different way.

A position like "no confidence in any organization that converses with the state", is not a matter of ideological, academic abstract analysis, it is the product of a living experience... It is something that the movements come to learn, but it' s not simple to realize it if you don't live in the struggle. Here, in Greece, almost everything around this issue is conquered by different forms of the state policy for immigrants. Hundreds and hundreds of them are persecuted and the state faces no problem at all. They arrest thousands of people, put them to trial... you walk in the street and you see people crawling in their knees, hands behind their back, surrounded by riot police... The only thing that will happen is some organization -that in some way is also financed by the state- will make some denunciation of the sad event in a newspaper... and apart from the financing issue, these organizations also share the same rationale with the state: that there are "good" and "bad" immigrants.

- More than generally rejecting the confinement of the struggle in the level of one certain demand (legalization, papers et.c), the big difference is if there is a movement or not. It's different having a situation of struggle around one demand, by the immigrants themselves, and another thing having some organizations writing the demands, choosing what these demands will be, and having the immigrants as the decoration for their political careers. In the first occasion one demand can be the beginning, in the second it's the limit...

In Greece, legalization of immigrants was not a demand of an immigrants' struggle. The process of legalization started as a state policy, because this was in the interest of the state in a certain period. [The first immigrants' waves started arriving relatively recently, in the beginning of the '90s and until 1998 there was not any official status, not even for legally allowing massive arrests and deportations]. The state started this process of giving papers to a small number of immigrants and promising legalization, for its own purposes. In order to control immigration, to be able to consolidate repression, in order to register and count -for the first time- the immigrants, write down their names and homes, in order to establish some divisions to justify who can stay and who can not.

The greek organizations that supported this policy of the state, had a key-role in convincing the immigrants to accept it, persuading them in a way that the state couldn't have achieved. They counted on the immigrants' fear, insecurity and individualization, on the fact that there was no solidarity, no struggle to put things different, you know, for the 1st generation of immigrants it's always most difficult, people who work all day to live and then retreating to the dark.

So, this project set the following terms: legalization for those who are needed for production. The green card is renewed every six month, according to the number of stamps a person has from work, e.g. how many days he or she's worked, and it is necessary that the boss guarantees for the worker. [This turned immigrants to slaves. It is a massive phenomenon that bosses hire immigrants and don't pay them money, or pay them poorly, blackmailing them that if they react, then the boss will not verify to the authorities that the immigrant has a job and will lose the green card]. For the green card you also need to go to the police, where they open your file, with all the information they need for you [which means when you don't get the green card, they know where you live and they come to arrest you], and also pass medical exams. Hundreds of thousands people are permanent hostages. These supposed to be anti-racist organizations contributed to this reality, they helped the state's project, in the name of helping the immigrants and offered the state a "humanitarian" excuse for these racist laws.

- In 1998, when a fascist took a gun and shot in one night 9 immigrants, killing two of them, in Athens, there was a big demonstration. It was the first time so many immigrants were on the streets together. They were from many countries, from Nigeria, Kurdistan, Iraq, Ghana, Egypt, Albania, just like the victims of the fascist attack. In this demonstration, even for aesthetic reasons it was repulsive to see the white greek members of left organizations stopping the African people who were ready to attack the police outside the Parliament. The leftists made a cordon if front of them, to keep them away from the cops, they were running up and down, pushing back and telling them "you are drunk, go back"... The big problem is that there is not self-organization. The only kind of organization that exists now is in order to repressing any possibility for self-organization.

- I agree with the estimation that the state was not ready to receive such a huge wave of immigrants (after 1990), it was unable to control the borders and the country. This is why hundreds of thousands of people managed to get through the borders somehow easily, and now they live and work in Greece. This fact had certain consequences. ... Workers' day job salaries went down, the bosses of course were earning from the inflow of cheap labor force. Immigrants in large groups arriving were uncontrolled by the state - they were not incorporated in the way of life and laws that exist here. The state manipulated some supposedly "spontaneous" reactions of local racists around the issue that they named "imported crime", in order to extract social consent in its efforts to attack and subdue, not only the immigrants but big part of the population.

But after a while they found themselves in front of the question what other policy, apart from repression, the state would use to confront immigration. So, they decided to legalize a part of them: Those who would offer guarantees that will stay temporarily (those who have families somewhere else), that have a job and a boss who will sign for them, that have permanent residence, that they are healthy (so that the state won't have to pay their medicine) and that they are not persecuted in their countries for penal code crimes (something that the immigrants had to prove, bringing official papers!). These were the criteria that an immigrant should fulfil in order to take the green card. The various immigrants' organizations and mainly the local organizations of supporters, rather than advising them not to get in this process, to refuse these terms as grounds for discussion (because after the first division, then it would be too late for those excluded from the status required), they preferred to encourage them accept it and covered a part of them. Many who had not these guarantees were left prey to the police "sweeping" operations. We have to say that the organized cleansing operations, tortures, arrests and murders of immigrants by state forces were escalated exactly after the enactment of the "green card law"... Another part of the immigrants, those who were rather more incorporated -e.g. educated, closer to the greek reality or closer to the greek organizations-, this part that after all was valuable because it could play the role of a "shield" concerning the others, this part passed in the side of the regime, the ngo's and the state, they were legalized. The rest were left exposed. As an Albanian immigrant sarcastically said: "each one for himself ...and god for all".... Such answers don't give room to the creation of a movement, they only give room for mediation.

Some people (from these supporters' organizations) appear to defend the immigrants when they are already prosecuted or shot, but there is no real resistance, and they don't want to it to happen! ... The excuse these people used when they hindered African youths from clashing with the police in that demonstration after the shooting of 10 immigrants, was that they would get beaten, you will go to prison, you will be deported... But even a move of rage, even of desperation, exactly because it is just, it is fair and spontaneous, can be decisive for the creation of a movement. The thing that creates movements is not a barren rationalism, a strict program or a top summit of the leaders in the immigrants' communities. On the contrary, it's these actions that burst, and because of that they occupy the space around them, put crucial and urgent dilemmas to society. If there couldn't be such a dilemma to the greek society when that fascist shot ten people in the middle of the street because of the color of their skin, then what else could make people take the streets?

...These organizations are based on immigrants' individualization and that's what they promote. And their helplessness. In order for these organizations continue existing, they immigrants should stay in a helpless condition. Because if they start demanding things by themselves, if they try, if they attempt to break the silence and order... then it's problem. Inside the office of such an organization there is a room used by the ministry, to give information to the green card!