Police Commissioner Mr.Symoudis answered some of our questions about the immigrants that live in our city, Kavala. The conclusions of the interview are the following: First of all, a big wave of immigrants arrived some decades ago, when the Soviet Republic collapsed. Also, there are many people from Third World Countries such as Pakistan, Iraq, Iran and Egyptians asking for political asylum. Nevertheless, immigrants in Kavala are mainly from neighboring countries such as Albania and Bulgaria.

 The commissioner pointed out that most of the crimes are committed by homeless and poor immigrants such as Ex-Soviet and Albanian people. About a decade ago crimes by immigrants were more frequent than they are today. This decrease is due to police activities and the integration of those populations in Kavala.

 The people, who have been embodied in our city, are mainly Albanians and Ex- Soviets, people that came in the late 80’s. And that is because they live among us for many years and they have adopted our culture. On the other hand there are those who come in Kavala and generally in Greece, asking for asylum. The integration of those people is significantly difficult, because they came here recently and they derive from countries such as Pakistan and Iraq and their culture is much more different than ours.

 The immigrants come to Europe through the sea. The boats they use are old, not in good shape and consequently there are many accidents.

 Tarafie Marouk Panagiotis (Egyptian worker in the city’s fishing boats and responsible for hiring other workers)

 In the interview he stated that, almost 100 Egyptians reside in our city. Only few of them have legal residence authorization, others come via Visa for certain months every year while some of them are illegal.  They usually work from 1/3 to 15/12 or from 1/10 to 31/5.

 Almost all of them come to Kavala without their families and they live inside the fishing boats.

 Those people haven’t been embodied in the lifestyle of the city, because they are completely isolated and they don’t take part in any activities of the city. That might happen because they are obliged to send all of their money to their families and so they don’t have the economic possibility to waste any of their money. Despite the problem, the city council and the community are not willing to fix it. On the other hand these people are very peaceful and they don’t cause any problems in our society.