26.2.13
According to a document by the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs H. Athanasiou which was read in Parliaments, there are 537,237 legal migrants currently in Greece. There is no number for illegal immigrants, since the only available data comes from Police and Coast Guard are prosecution statistics from 2008 onwards.
According to the Police’s official statistics, between 2008 and 2012 approximately 577,900 illegal immigrants were arrested. Mr. Athanasiou explained that “any attempt to determine the number of [illegal immigrants] is entirely risky and that “all those people do not necessarily still reside in Greece, or that other people managed to enter Greece without being detected by the police or Coast Guard”.
The Minister does however consider useful the publication of ELSTAT results, which aside from Greek and legal migrants also documents illegal immigrants.
