Stranded in Greece on a field on broken dreams, refugees’ desperation grows

By the hundreds they come, trudging along the sides of highways and across fields, dragging tired toddlers and pushing the elderly and injured in wheelchairs — a seemingly endless stream of humanity heading north for a better life.

Only their path has been blocked by border restrictions set up by European leaders balking at the sheer magnitude of the problem they face: How to care for and integrate hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants knocking at their door.

The fields on the outskirts of this Greek border town have become the flashpoint in Europe’s massive refugee crisis, the size of which the continent has not seen since World War II.

At the border, Macedonian authorities have set up coils of razor wire, leaving a narrow passage through which they control the migration flow

The first restrictions were applied late last year to those deemed to be economic migrants fleeing poverty in their homelands. Only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans were permitted to pass. Then last month, Afghans were stopped too. Now, Macedonia says it will only let as many refugees in as Serbia to the north will allow to cross its frontier — sometimes as few as 30 a day. Sometimes none.

It didn’t take more than a day or two for the refugee camp on the Greek side of the border, with a capacity of about 2,000, to overflow. Now, hundreds of tents are pitched around it, spilling out across a railway line into the nearby fields. An estimated 10,000 people are camped here, hoping against hope that the border will open and they will be let through.

For some, arriving after days or weeks of a journey that nearly cost them their lives as they fled across the sea to Greek islands from Turkey, the sight is almost unbearable: They fear this field is where their dreams have come to die.