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<\/p>\nLONDON (THE TELEGRAPH) \u2013 Suella Braverman has been warned of a new wave of Albanian migrants crossing the Channel this summer despite the crackdown on small boats.<\/p>\n
The Home Secretary has been handed an internal survey, commissioned by the UK embassy in Tirana, showing that half of young Albanians want to cross the Channel to Britain this summer.<\/p>\n
The poll, based on 1,800 households in Kuk\u00ebs, the main area in northern Albania for migrants, showed half of young men aged between 17 and 22 wanted to quit their homeland and come to Britain despite the risks of crossing the Channel.<\/p>\n
The disclosure underlines the seasonal nature of illegal migration by Albanians as the main surge from the country did not materialize last year until June through to September, when more than 10,000 of the 12,000 Albanians crossed the Channel in 2022.<\/p>\n
It comes as Rishi Sunak and Braverman hailed a 90% fall in the number of Albanians arriving by small boat so far this year as evidence that their crackdown on small boats was working. The numbers have fallen from 2,165 in January to June 2022, to 151 in the first five months of 2023.<\/p>\n
Braverman told MPs that the Government was \u201cnot complacent\u201d despite the fall in numbers and would continue to monitor crossings by Albanians.<\/p>\n
The Home Office has intensified its crackdown on Albanians in the past two months, setting up a 400-strong unit to fast-track nearly 17,000 asylum applications. Sunak on Monday disclosed that the success rate for Albanians claiming asylum had fallen from nearly one in five (17%) to 2%.<\/p>\n
Ministers are also targeting as many as 20,000 more Albanians who entered the UK illegally although they admit as many as 70% to 80% may have absconded from their immigration bail.<\/p>\n
They have also tightened rules on modern slavery amid claims that it has been exploited by Albanian migrants to avoid deportation. Since the Government raised the threshold for evidence, Sunak said the proportion of claims refused had nearly tripled from 12% to 42%.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The poll, conducted by Swiss Contact and funded by the UK Government, found that overall 38% of people in northern Albania, one of the poorest areas, wanted to leave.<\/p>\n
Of these 59% said they wanted to come to the UK, just 20% chose Germany and only 7% the United States. Nearly half (47%) of those who wanted to come to the UK said they already had relatives in the UK. Young Albanians represented the biggest contingent of those wanting to leave for the UK.<\/p>\n
A record 45,700 migrants reached the UK last year across the Channel, of which a quarter were Albanians. Figures on Monday showed that Afghans, Iraqis and Iranians remain the biggest groups despite falls. However, there has been a surge in Indians, up from 98 to 855, Turks up from 169 to 516 and Vietnamese up from 279 to 342.<\/p>\n
A Home Office spokesman said: \u201cWe value our Albanian community in the UK, and work closely with the Albanian government on a range of issues, including tackling illegal migration. Together we will continue to take every opportunity to intercept the activities of organized criminal gangs, speed up removal of those with no right to be in the UK, and inform migrants of the risks of small boat crossings. The number of Albanian small boat arrivals has fallen by almost 90% compared to this time last year, and since signing our Joint Communique we have together returned around 1,800 Albanian nationals with no right to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON (THE TELEGRAPH) \u2013 Suella Braverman has been warned of a new wave of Albanian migrants crossing the Channel this summer despite the crackdown on small boats. The Home Secretary has been handed an internal survey, commissioned by the UK embassy in Tirana, showing that half of young Albanians want to cross the Channel to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":54801,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[153],"tags":[2581,2582,243,151,1141,2580],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n