Fleeing Greeks bank on new Australian gold rush

Fleeing Greeks bank on new Australian gold rush
The debt crisis has sent desperate Greek graduates to the other side of the world to a place they see as a land of opportunity

Helena Smith

Greeks seeking economic opportunity are flocking to Melbourne.
Photograph: Mark Segal/Getty Images

For several months a stream of mostly young men and women, fresh off the plane from Greece, has been knocking at the doors of a large building on Lonsdale Street in the heart of Melbourne. The 1940s block houses the headquarters of Australia's biggest Greek community. In scenes reminiscent of the great gold rush at the turn of the 20th century, the men and women have travelled to the other side of the world in search of a better life. Unlike Greeks of old, however, these new émigrésare noticeably accomplished, with hard-earned degrees won in some of the toughest fields.

"They're all university graduates, engineers, architects, mechanics, teachers, bankers who will do anything for work," says Bill Papastergiades, the community's lawyer president. "It's desperate stuff. We're all aghast. Often they'll just turn up with a bag. Their stories are heartbreaking and on every plane there are more," he told the Guardian in a telephone interview. "A lot come here and are literally lost. We've taken to putting them in houses, five or six of them at a time, here in the centre."

The exodus is just one part of the human drama being played out in Greece where Europe's debt crisis began. Since June, Melbourne community leaders say they have been deluged with thousands of letters, emails and telephone calls from Greeks desperate to migrate to a country that, safeguarded from global market turbulence, is now seen as the land of unparalleled opportunity.

This year alone, 2,500 Greek citizens have moved to Australia although officials in Athens say another 40,000 have also "expressed interest" in initiating the arduous process to settle there. An 800-seat Australian government "skills expo" held in the Greek capital in October attracted some 13,000 applicants.

With Greece braced for a fifth year of recession, unemployment at a record 18% – and an unprecedented 42.5% of the nation's youth out of work — the brain drain is only expected to grow. The Australian economy, by contrast, is predicted to grow 4% in 2012.

"Often people say they just don't want their children to grow up there," said Papastergiades. "The other day I had a phone call from a Greek plumber who said he hadn't worked for eight months, had three kids to feed and was so desperate he had considered killing himself. The same day I received a letter from a professor at Athens University who also said he was wanted to migrate with his entire family here."

Tessie Spilioti is among those who have already relocated to Australia. A talented curator and artist, her gallery in the once bustling historic centre of Athens bore testimony to the boom times that followed the 2004 Olympics. But by late 2008, as recession set in, she found herself bearing witness to the decline and fall of a city gripped increasingly by strikes, protests and riots.

By the time the 45-year-old decided to move to Melbourne last summer, art had become a luxury that few could afford, with galleries even holding yoga classes to make ends meets.

"There's nowhere in the world like Greece and I miss it and my friends every single day," said Spilioti who grew up in Australia before settling in Athens 27 years ago. "But Australia is a positive country. It's the land of plenty, there is a feeling of abundance and of opportunity," she enthused. "That's totally missing in Greece. Instead people are panic-stricken, the vibe is bad, the psychology is bad and there's a feeling of almost being under siege. I never thought I'd leave but with the stress of day-to-day survival I knew it was going to be very difficult to evolve."

Two generations are expected to be lost as a result of Greece's great economic crisis. The new diaspora, say experts, will almost certainly comprise younger Greeks who are well-educated and multilingual but are no longer able to survive in a country whose economy is in freefall, partly because of the biting austerity measures Greece has been forced to apply in exchange for aid.

A recent study by Thessaloniki University showed the vast majority of Greeks now opting to look for work abroad with the younger generation heading for countries as diverse as Russia, China and Iran.

Of those surveyed most hadn't even attempted to find work at home because they saw no future in an economy that is expected to endure stringent belt-tightening for at least the next decade.

In Australia the influx has dismayed other Greeks forced by poverty and war to emigrate in the 1950s and 60s.

For years, the diaspora has been looked down on with successive governments in Athens refusing even to give voting rights to ethnic Greeks abroad, even in places like Melbourne whose prosperous Greek community is more than 300,000-strong. Seeing their homeland's talented youth now arriving en masse – with most prepared to do the most menial jobs to get by – has been a rude awakening.

"There's a lot of shattered dreams,' says Litsa Georgiou, 48, who moved to Sydney with her toddler daughter and Athenian husband last year. "The community is in shock.

"Many had hoped to move back to Greece … instead you hear stories every day of someone who has taken that 22-hour flight to move here. It's terrible to think that it is going to take 10 years before Greece even begins to recover."
The allure of Australia

Australia is a popular destination for Greeks because of its substantial Hellenic population. Melbourne claims to be the largest Greek city in the world outside of Greece. They came mostly in the 1950s and 60s, leaving behind the hardships of postwar Europe. But in the 1970s many returned to Greece after the junta fell and it is estimated there are about 100,000 Greek Australians living in Greece now.

As well as the large Greek community, the Australian economy is also a draw card. Unemployment is just 5% and growth is predicted by the OECD to be 4% in 2012.

But visa standards for entry into Australia are stringent.

Only 134 visas were granted to Greeks in the year to June 2011, with all but 15 granted on family grounds. In the same year, 102 student visas were granted, an increase of 56% on the previous year.

Certain professions are favoured by the Australian government, including health workers and engineers. Applications for skilled visas can take months to complete and are no guarantee of work once you arrive, unless you have been sponsored by an employer.