The Home Office is launching an advertising campaign to discourage Albanians from crossing the channels illegally

 Sunday May 28, 2023

The Home Office is set to launch an advertising campaign to discourage Albanians from illegally crossing the English Channel to reach the UK with the message that people "face detention and deportation" if they make the journey.

The campaign, which starts in Albania next week, "will shed light on the dangers that illegal immigrants can face on small boats.

Ads in Albanian on Facebook and Instagram were launched last August to try to dissuade Albanian citizens from the trip.

This was the most common nationality seeking asylum in the UK in the year to March 2023, with 13,714 applications from Albanian nationals, of which 9,487 were from boat arrivals crossing the English Channel.

However, the UK government sees Albania as a "safe and prosperous country" and illegal immigrants "travel through several countries to make their way to the UK" to make "false asylum claims.

At the Source" Crackdown

Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick said: “Organized immigration crime is a global challenge that requires international solutions along the migration route.

“This includes proactively working at the source before people embark on dangerous and unnecessary journeys.

We are determined to stop the boats and the campaign launching in Albania this week is just one part of the Home Office's work against the tide to help dispel the myths about illegal travel to the UK, explain the reality and combat the lies peddled by bad people. -smugglers who profit from this vile trade."

But the opposition Labor Party said the Conservative government's attempt to tackle illegal immigration had failed "at every turn".

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “It beggars belief that as Channel crossings continue to rise and the asylum system is in chaos, the only thing the Conservatives can come up with to stop criminal gangs is an advertising campaign.

“At every turn the so-called Tory solutions do not match the scale of the crisis. All they do is tinker around the edges.”

Safe country

The government is under intense pressure from Tory MPs to tackle the problem of human traffickers who use small boats to ferry illegal immigrants across the Channel to the UK.

The number of Albanian small boats peaked in the summer of 2022 and fell below the level recorded in 2021 in early 2023, the interior ministry said last week.

Downing Street said there had been a 20 per cent drop in asylum grants for Albanians and there had been "some success" with the UK government's partnership with the Albanian authorities.

But the immigration secretary said last December that Albanians should be completely barred from seeking asylum in the UK because they come from a "demonstrably safe" country.

"Albania is a proven safe country. It is very difficult to see how an Albanian should be able to successfully apply for asylum here in the UK,” Jenrick told GB News.

"Modern slavery" he claims

Earlier this year, it emerged that more than half of illegal immigrants claiming to be victims of "modern slavery" - after crossing the Channel in the first half of 2022 - were Albanian.

The Home Office made the revelations in response to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests from campaigning group Migration Watch UK.

Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch, said illegal immigrants and human traffickers were taking advantage of "huge loopholes" in UK law and "gaming" the system.

Under the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), people who claim to be victims of human trafficking or modern slavery cannot be deported until their claim has been investigated.

According to government figures released in November, 91 per cent of Albanian small boats who claimed to be victims of modern slavery were allowed to remain in the UK until the Home Office fully investigated their claims.

The average application took 561 days to process, according to the data, during which illegal immigrants are offered housing, food, legal aid and counseling.