9 out of 10 Albanians Allowed to Stay in UK While Their Modern Slavery Claims Are Checked

Groups of illegal immigrants are housed in tents after being brought in to Dover, Kent, from Border Force vessels following a number of small boat incidents in the English Channel, on Sept. 22, 2022. Gareth Fuller/PA Media

Ninety-one percent of Albanians who claimed to be the victims of modern slavery when they arrived in Britain after crossing the English Channel have been allowed to stay in the country pending a full investigation of their claims by the Home Office, according to the latest figures.

On Oct. 26, Dan O’Mahoney, the Home Office’s Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, told the Home Affairs Committee 12,000 Albanian migrants had crossed the Channel this year, up from 800 in 2021, and the Home Office figures show that 3,467 of them have claimed to be victims of trafficking or modern slavery.

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

The Home Office data, published on Thursday, said 91 percent of Albanians were found to have “reasonable grounds” to be accepted onto the NRM and it said the average application was taking 561 days to process, during which time they are offered accommodation, food, legal aid, and counselling.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman leaves after a visit to the migrant processing centre in Dover, Kent, on Nov. 3, 2022. PA

O'Mahoney, who met Home Secretary Suella Braverman when she visited the Manston processing centre in Kent on Thursday, told the committee many Albanians were “deliberately gaming the system.”

He said: “We will typically put them in a hotel for a couple of days, and then they’ll disappear, work illegally in the UK for maybe six months, maybe a year, send the money home, and then they’ll go back to Albania.”

O’Mahoney added, “They are able to do that because the way the asylum system works and the NRM works makes it quite easy for them to do so.”

Ministers have also claimed the Modern Slavery Act is being abused by illegal immigrants in order to avoid deportation.

Of all modern slavery claims, Albanians account for 28.6 percent of them, up from 14 percent in 2020.

In the third quarter of this year a record 4,586 people claimed to be victims of modern slavery and 1,310 were from Albania.

People thought to be illegal immigrants pass the car of Home Secretary Suella Braverman during her visit to the Manston migrant processing centre in Kent on Nov. 3, 2022. PA

On Monday Braverman told the Commons, “If those people are genuinely victims of modern slavery they should be claiming that protection in Albania.”

She also referred to the migrant crisis as an “invasion” but was immediately criticised by Albania’s Prime Minister, Edi Rama, who wrote on Twitter, “Targeting Albanians (as some shamefully did when fighting for Brexit) as the cause of Britain’s crime and border problems makes for easy rhetoric but ignores hard fact.”

He later told the BBC, “I really am disgusted about this kind of politics that at the end is doomed to fail.”

But Rama also confirmed Albania was a “safe country of origin,” suggesting Albanians had no reason to seek asylum in Britain or anywhere else.