Albanian minors arrive in Britain and become victims of exploitation – Newsbomb- News

applicants seek refuge From Albania they travel to the UK

A 16-year-old from Albania, who arrived in the UK by boat last year, believes he has found salvation in an east London charity. The minor was housed in Home Office hotels and then kidnapped by traffickers to work on a cannabis farm in Leeds.

This child is one of 12,561 Albanian nationals who traveled to the UK by boat last year and is at the center of a debate about Illegal immigration from this former communist country affected by poverty, the Guardian writes.

An elderly Albanian at the hotel promises to help him find his sister, who lives in London. Instead, I put him to work tending to cannabis plants,” said a senior employee at Shabrisa charity. He was locked inside the house for three months, until the police raided the place, saw he was a child, and reunited him with his sister.”

Immigrants from Albania

Albanians made up 28% of small boat arrivals in the UK in 2022, according to Statistics, the highest percentage of any nationality, followed by Afghans (20%). Of the Albanian arrivals, 85% claimed asylum and about 12% said they were victims of modern slavery. This represents a sharp increase from 2020, when just 50 Albanians crossed in small boats.

The surge in arrivals from Albania was partly why Interior Minister Soela Braverman spoke of an “invasion of our southern coast” in November. The government’s position is that Albania, as a candidate country for membership in the European Union, is a safe country, and the people who live there “face no serious risk of persecution”.

Dan O’Mahony was, until January, the official charged with handling the increase in small boats arriving in the UK. He told MPs last fall that the “exponential” rise was because Albanian criminal gangs “acquired a base in northern France and began facilitating too many migrants.” “. He estimated that 1-2% of adult males in Albania made the trip by boat, a figure disputed by Albanian officials.

It’s not the time to look for a job if you have the word Albanian on your resume.

Young Albanians at a previous group meeting organized by Shpresa described the discrimination they faced since news of the increasing number of Albanians arriving by boat made headlines in the fall.

“In 2015 people thought we were coming for jobs or benefits. Now people say we are all criminals,” said one young man who was trafficked to the UK as a teenager. “It is not the time to look for a job if you have an Albanian word on your resume. We feel we have become a scapegoat in Britain’s political crisis over immigration.”

Ardur (not his real name), 25, said he did not want to leave his parents and siblings eight years ago when he turned 17, but a feud between his family and another in the northern Albanian village where he grew up had turned violent, and fearing he would be targeted, his father paid for smuggled to the UK.

“They consider us unreliable asylum seekers. People assume we have come for a better life. For some it is true – the people are poor, the country is corrupt and full of crime and hate, and there is no future for young people. But I came because my life was in danger.”

Violence often starts its way to the UK

According to The Guardian, girls and young women are often victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation. But men are also violently exploited. “It’s hard to understand how violent and abusive traffickers can be,” says the Shpresa director.

Violence often starts its way to the UK. People who are smuggled into the country and then see their asylum applications rejected have two options – either work on the ‘black market’ or work criminally. They cannot return home unless they pay back the money owed to their traffickers.

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