Foreign Correspondent: July 14

Foreign Correspondent looks at the issue of asylum seekers this week -but not in Australia.

Instead it turns its attention to Kos, a tiny tourist mecca in Greece, already struggling with its own internal dramas.

Every night they land in flimsy rubber boats, trudging ashore drenched and exhausted. It’s a short trip across the sea from Turkey to Kos, in easternmost Greece, but for these people the journey began much further away – in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan.

“What is the name of this place?” a bedraggled migrant asks reporter Barbara Miller after he crawls from the water. “Kos. Kos island. Greece,” she answers.

At dawn another day, Miller spots some stragglers whose boat is barely making headway towards shore. Three men are aboard. Then a fourth man comes into sight – he’s hanging off the stern, kicking hard to push the boat forward.

These are just a few of the thousand or more boat people landing in Kos each week, helping Greece topple Italy as the main sea entry point to Europe – with 68,000 arrivals so far this year. It’s hardly a title the Greeks crave in these dire economic times. But while many Kos locals are doing it tough, they help feed and take care of the migrants.

“You see that people are in a worse situation than you are… We have to be more kind to each other.” – Kontessa, Kos florist and volunteer

Some of the European tourists pitch in to help. Others resent sharing the island idyll.

“You’re here on a holiday to relax and you don’t really want them roaming around near your sun-beds.” – Sebastiaan, Dutch tourist

Kos is just a stop-off for this flood of asylum seekers and economic migrants. Their ultimate destinations are the very same countries that the vacationers come from in northern and western Europe.

“In front of me is the whole Europe. Inshallah I will do something better for myself.” – Muhammad, from Pakistan

Within a couple of weeks most of the Kos migrants get papers enabling them to take a ferry to Athens. Many will then buy fake passports from the same smuggling networks that got them to Kos. Then they can try their luck further north.

Others, like Azar from Syria, just can’t afford to pay more money to the smugglers. Azar will start a long march through Macedonia and Serbia with the goal of slipping into a northern European country.

“Getting to Greece was the easiest bit I guess” – Azar

8pm Tuesday ABC.