Minister of Migration and Asylum Dimitris Kairidis met in Washington with Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration Julieta Valls Noyues and Homeland Security Deputy Assistant Secretary for Border and Immigration Adam Hunter.
Kairidis discussed the shared challenges confronting both the US and Europe regarding the illegal trafficking of migrants and legal migration, as the US experienced nearly 3 million illegal arrivals in 2023, approximately ten times more than the EU did. There was consensus on the global nature of smuggling networks, and their interconnectedness as evidenced by irregular migrants from Latin America in Europe and from Sub-Saharan Africa in the US. This underscored the necessity for closer transatlantic cooperation between the US and the EU, they said.
The possibility of Greece participating in a series of US programs and funding, as other European countries already do, was explored and both sides agreed to a regular dialogue.
Both American interlocutors, especially Noyues, expressed their admiration for Greece’s achievement of gaining wide interparty consent on a way for undocumented migrants to be able to live and work in Greece and congratulated the Greek government on its migration policy, which combines combating illegal migration with the creation of legal alternatives.
