Immigration in Cyprus
Written by Andria Antoniou
Edited by Gianna Furnari and Lote Līva Leimane
*This is an opinion piece *
For decades, immigration has always been a huge topic in politics, schools, social gatherings, protests, and everyday life conversations. In Europe, immigration is one of the biggest social issues that causes the most friction within our society. Immigration started at least 20,000 years ago, and it is still a huge problem worldwide. Immigrants always face disparaging treatment, especially in the workplace. Every time an immigrant wants to apply for a job, the discrimination in the workplace is awful; colleagues might make fun of them for how they look, where they come from, or even their accent. The boss sees the bullying and does nothing; instead of helping, he just joins his employees. This is just the simplest form of discrimination to exist, and it is horrible how normalised it has become.
Abuse and harassment often trouble immigrants because they face it almost every day. Parents and their children have to move all the time because they may get attacked by locals or removed with force by the police; emotional abuse is as bad as physical abuse; they are being treated in the worst way possible; and in everything that happens between the government and the locals, they always blame the immigrants for ‘’stealing’’ their money and never feel safe when they walk past or around them.
Poverty is another problem that they face in their new home country; they leave their countries with a huge risk of endangering themselves and hoping they are not caught trying to enter the sea borders of another country. The danger they face in the sea is terrifying; only a small number of them make it to land because they all try to survive no matter what and often fight for a spot on the very small boats they travel with, resulting in many of them, especially children, drowning in the open sea.
Raising their children is a big challenge for them, given their circumstances and the very low wages they get from the government. Some of these children are forced to work from a very young age just to bring more money to the family. Children under the age of twelve are obligated to work because their parents are not making enough money for a full month of groceries and special needs. Imagine if you were in their shoes, having to work full-time jobs six days a week and maybe even seven to provide for your family. If that was not enough, imagine the discrimination they go through by the older people they work with, who are always looked down upon and never taken seriously. Younger refugees often are subjected to this type of mistreatment and sexual harassment. Most importantly young women who work with men. It is awful how often the news will mention young girls being raped by the people they work for, still, nobody does anything to prevent this disgusting action from happening. For example in Cyprus when young girls report this to their local police, the Cypriot police will either ignore them or make fun of them. It is absurd how normalized sexual abuse is against female refugees. Immigrant men are often harassing many young Cypriot women, leaving them with no choice but to resent them and to generalise that all immigrant men have bad intent towards them.
When immigrants harass the local Cypriots in any sort of way, the locals have more reasons to resent them than before for making them feel unsafe in their communities. I often see many immigrants waiting in lines with their children to get a permit to live in Cyprus and to pay their taxes. However, because there is a language barrier between immigrants and locals it can often cause misunderstandings.
People often see immigrants as the enemy; they view them as threats and competition leading to riots against them and brutal fights between them, which have no moral cause and lead to nothing most of the time. Racists want to prove something that does not exist just so they can send the immigrants back to their countries. That is why they start meaningless protests and cause trouble for no reason. Immigrants are constantly being labelled criminals; this separates them and gives them a lower status than white people in a society where they have less political power. They cannot vote, which is a sad fact, and they eventually understand that no one owes them anything and they have to work hard to earn everything. They come up with creative solutions to problems when the odds are stacked against them.