By Europe correspondent Barbara Miller Tuesday 14 July 2015
Photo: A group of around 40 Syrian men, women and children, cross the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece in a rubber boat arranged by people smugglers. (ABC News)
Related Story: The curious art of migrant spotting in Greece
It is just after 3:00am and so dark I worry we might run over migrant boats without even noticing them.
Suddenly the radar picks up what could be one a short distance away and we are racing towards it.
We are on patrol with the coast guard on the Greek island of Kos, a few nautical miles off Turkey.
Within a couple of minutes, we have drawn up alongside the migrant boat, seven metres long, packed with men, women and children.
Photo: Mohammad (centre) and his friends get their registration papers from the Kos police which allow them to travel to Athens (Foreign Correspondent)
Rescuing migrants has become routine for the coast guard, but that does not make it easy.
The migrants are panicked and fearful, the sea is relatively rough and their flimsy boat could capsize if they all rush to clamber onto the coast guard vessel.
There are just four coast guard officers on this patrol, who are now responsible for 40 migrants.
First you have to convince them to get off their unseaworthy boat.
"Where are we going my friend?" shouts one man.
"Greece, Greece," answers the coast guard officer.
"Greece? You sure my friend?"
What the migrants do not want is to be picked up by the Turkish coast guard before they reach Greek waters.
That is what happened to Mohammad and his friend on their first attempt to reach Europe.
They were brought back to Turkey and put in open-air detention for a night.
The next day smugglers arranged another boat and they set off again, this time making it to Greece.
Video: Men, women and children are rescued from a boat by Greek coastguard (ABC News)
People smugglers 'the essence of badness'
Mohammad, a 28-year-old sound engineer from Damascus, detests the people smugglers he had to pay to get here.
On the scene: the port
Scores of migrants who have been plucked to safety overnight from flimsy rubber boats can be found each morning at the Kos port.
As their names are taken and passports checked, they huddle together in small groups beside the few belongings they could bring with them.
Most have just one small bag. It is the very young and very old who get to you most.
The children have colourful life jackets in pinks and blues, some with prints of shells and sea creatures.
They look totally inadequate for the dangerous voyage they have just undertaken. The babies have no life jackets.
An older man stands out amongst one group. He walks slowly, holding the hand of a young child.
He is probably only in his late 50s, but it seems life has wearied him. How much must he already have been through?
How bad can it have been for him to set out on this journey and dare to start again?
The child's other hand is held by a younger man, presumably the father. Three generations have risked this journey to Europe into an uncertain future.
There is no sign of the little boy's mother."Smugglers are you know ... they're like the essence of badness," he says.
Mohammad says he had no choice but to enter Europe illegally with their help.
"If we had a formal way to go to Europe, I wouldn't think of going this way," he says.
He says repeated attempts to get a visa for a European country failed.
"Even if you pay money, if you say that, 'I am a millionaire, I have a million dollars', or a million something, they won't give you a visa because you are Syrian."
He has come here with his brother's friend Yamen, a dentist — middle-class Syrians fleeing a war they want no part in.
"I don't see fighting your brother is a good cause," Mohammad says.
Mohammad and his friend can afford to pay for a cheap hotel room in town while they wait to be processed by Kos authorities.
Many others must make do with the abandoned and dilapidated hotel, the Captain Elias, which serves as emergency accommodation for the migrants.
It is dirty and overcrowded, there is no electricity and water is only available from an outside tap.
The local authorities say they cannot afford to pay for a proper reception centre, and Athens has no money either.
"It is already asking the municipal councils for money in order to pay its current debt," Kos mayor George Kyritsis says of the central government.
"We should perhaps start a campaign telling the Europeans, 'look at the situation, you share the responsibility for this situation'.
"I believe that Greece wants to help but it does not have the means, but Europe looks like it does not have the will to help."
Immigrants dreaming big
Another Muhammad, this one from Pakistan, says staying at the Captain Elias is not so bad.
He feels safe here because no-one bothers him.
"You can't sleep on the roads, on the parks, because you don't know anybody, you haven't relatives here, you haven't friends here," he says.
"This is a totally strange country for you."
Photo: The Kos Coast Guard ask a group of migrants for their identifications. (ABC News)
Muhammad's journey has brought him from Lahore in Pakistan, through Iran, Azerbaijan and then to Turkey — where he worked for six months to raise the $805 smugglers demanded for a place in a flimsy rubber boat to Greece.
Work as a mill worker dried up at home, he says, as a result of electricity shortages.
Now I am free, now I have a chances, because in front of me is the whole Europe.
Pakistani immigrant Muhammad
Muhammad has spent two weeks on Kos waiting for registration papers which will allow him to leave Kos and travel on to Athens.
There he will try and find work on the black market or try and move on to another European country less broke than Greece.
Unlike his Syrian namesake, Muhammad probably will not apply for asylum, as he is an economic migrant.
His prospects of ever being anything other than an illegal immigrant are slim, but he is dreaming big.
"Now I am free, now I have a chances, because in front of me is the whole Europe," he says.
"I have lots of opportunities and Inshallah (God willing) I will do something better for myself."
As he picks up his papers at the Kos police station he beams with joy and gives us the thumbs up.
"Do you pray for us?" he laughs.
"We shall be successful, Inshallah."
Source: UNHCR
- In the first six months of this year, 68,000 asylum seekers and migrants arrived on the islands of Greece. Greece has now overtaken Italy as the main point of sea entry into Europe.
- More than 85 per cent of those arriving in Greece are from countries experiencing war and conflict, principally Syria (57 per cent), Afghanistan (22 per cent), and Iraq (5 per cent).
- Comparing the first four months of 2014 and the same time period in 2015, there has been a 1,251 per cent increase in the number of migrants and asylum seekers arriving on the island of Kos. Between 100 and 300 arrive each day.
- Of the many Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, only three have formal reception facilities for migrants and asylum seekers. Kos has no formal facilities for the arrivals.
- More than 4 million Syrians have fled their country on account of the conflict there.
- Around 90 per cent of Syrian asylum seekers arriving in Greece want to find asylum somewhere else in the European Union, mostly in Germany and Sweden. More than half intended to apply for family reunification once they were settled.
- In May, the European Union asked member states to resettle 40,000 asylum seekers from Syria and Eritrea who have landed in Greece and Italy.
