Migration & Asylum Minister Dimitris Kairidis on Friday refuted a report by CBS claiming that the United States has agreed with European countries - including Greece - to relocate migrants from Latin America in order to discourage people from travelling to the US-Mexico borders.
According to the CBS report, citing two unnamed sources, Greece and Italy could accept up to 500 migrants each.
"Look, it is a very strange leak," Kairidis told SKai TV, "CBS' report is entirely fictitious, there is no such agreement with the Americans, nor even such a request about such a thing." He added that the Joe Biden presidency is under a lot of pressure ahead of US presidential elections, with 3,000,000 illegal migrant arrivals. "As you see, US President Biden has got to handle a very big crisis in his southern borders with the migration issue," Kairidis said, adding for comparison that Europe had to deal with 300,000 migrant arrivals.
He noted that what there actually is "is a broader discussion in Europe to boost legal migration as a deterrent of the illegal one and to satisfy the needs of the labor market with legal labor movement."
In addition, he said, the timing of the report is "suspicious, as it is 10 days before European elections" and the issue has not been discussed, "but there have been efforts to create a certain climate on the migration issue."