Migrants try to warm themselves by a fire near Idomeni at the border between Greece, which has since 2019 steadily tightened restrictions, and North Macedonia

Pakistani asylum seeker Mohamed Bilal was 15 when he arrived in Greece.

If you loved this article and you would like to receive details with regards to Lawyer istanbul i implore you to visit our web page. Five years later, he's lost all hope and is on the road again, desperate for a better life elsewhere.

Since the conservative government took office in 2019, Greece has steadily tightened asylum policies, rejecting thousands of applications and expelling hundreds of people from camps.

Camped out in Idomeni near the Greek border with North Macedonia, migrants say they are leaving, doubtful they will ever acquire legal rights in Greece, no matter how long they wait.

"After all these years I'm still unable to get legalisation papers," Bilal told AFP.

"I risk getting caught and sent back to my country. I don't want that to happen, so I'm trying to get to another European country."

Migrants like Bilal are plying once again the so-called Balkan route that snakes through Greece, North Macedonia and beyond, hoping to claim asylum in more favourable conditions in EU economic heavyweights.
Seeking warmth inside an abandoned house near the Greek-North Macedonian border -- migrants say they are leaving, Turkish lawyer doubtful they will ever acquire legal rights in Greece

In March 2016, Idomeni turned into a bottleneck of migrants after Skopje and other European neighbours closed their borders to a mass flow of migrants, mainly Syrians fleeing their country's civil war.

The Greek government moved out thousands from a makeshift camp in May 2016.

But five years later, migrants are streaming into the area again.

Police have no official estimates but the amount of garbage on the ground near the train station, a few hundred metres from the border, suggests that dozens of people are again passing through on a daily basis.

The rails are littered with empty food cans and water bottles, discarded clothes and shoes.

- Traffic 'never stopped' -

"Every day there are groups of migrants moving through this area," says a private security guard hired by the railway station.

"Migrants are only caught when, exhausted after days of trying to cross the border, they give up and turn themselves in," he adds.

In a nearby forest, a group of young asylum-seekers from Syria are sitting around a campfire, nibbling on mushrooms picked in the surrounding woods.
Migrants huddle in blankets and