Coping with a fundamental rights emergency – The situation of people crossing the Greek border in an irregular manner rights during the period until their departure can be implemented. Under certain conditions, individuals with suspended removal will be entitled to work. In this way, persons in removal proceedings will have a right to stay temporarily in the country facilitating their access to basic fundamental rights. It will also allow the authorities to have a better understanding of their numbers and whereabouts. While probably the majority of economic migrants are using Greece with the intention to enter the European Union, some consider Greece as a destination country. This is primarily the case of Albanian migration in Northern Greece, but also for other individuals who come to Greece to work, for example in private households as domestic workers, particularly as carers. This has also resulted from a research undertaken by the FRA into the fundamental rights situation of irregular migrants. 67 Interviews with undocumented migrants show that existing labour migration schemes in Greece appear not to be sufficient to cover the labour needs and that domestic workers are recruited from the pool of irregular migrants, mainly through acquaintances. Finally, various interlocutors informed the FRA that a number of irregular migrants currently in Greece entered the country regularly and/or had been working legally. In some cases, however, employers at some point refused to pay or could not afford the necessary social insurance contributions for the migrant, who as a result could not renew his/her residence permit. The FRA noted a readiness by the authorities to come up with a solution which would allow the migrants to re‐acquire the lost status, although no agreement seemed to exist on how this could best be achieved. A review of the mechanisms determining annual quota for migrant workers in order to align these with actual labour needs coupled with a review of policies to prevent migrant workers becoming irregular with no fault on their own is currently under way by the Greek Interior Ministry. 67 See http://fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/research/projects/proj_irregularimmigrants_en.htm. 43