Young Albanian victims of exploitation in Britain

Employees of an Albanian humanitarian organization in East London are helping a 16-year-old who entered Britain illegally by boat last year, after which he was placed in a hotel designated by the Home Office for immigrants, only to be kidnapped by smugglers to work at a cannabis farm in Leeds.

That child, according to the "Guardian", is one of the 12 Albanian citizens who arrived in Britain by boat last year and who found themselves at the center of a heated debate about illegal immigration.

"An elderly Albanian in the hotel promised to help him find his sister who lives in London. Instead, he was taken to work on a cannabis farm," an employee of the humanitarian organization "Špresa" told the British newspaper. The boy was locked up at the farm for three months, until the police swooped in, saw that he was a minor and put him in touch with his sister.

According to British government data, among those who illegally enter Britain by boat, the largest number are Albanians (28 percent), followed by Afghans (20 percent). About 85 percent of Albanian citizens who entered Britain illegally applied for asylum, and about 12 percent said they were victims of modern slavery, the Guardian points out.

The growth in the number of arrivals of immigrants from Albania partly prompted the Minister of the Interior, Suela Braverman, to talk about an "invasion of our southern coast" in November.

Britain unveiled its toughest Illegal Migration Act this week, calling for people arriving via illegal routes to be detained, deported to their homeland or "to a safe third country". Suela Brejevrman's message to asylum seekers, as the Associated Press agency points out, is clear: if you enter Britain illegally, you will be arrested and quickly deported." The United Nations Refugee Agency announced that the law represents a kind of "asylum ban" and that it clearly violates the UN Convention on Refugees.

The British government claims that many of those who set out on the journey are actually economic migrants, not refugees, and supports this claim with data on last year's increased number of arrivals from Albania, a European country that Britain considers safe and where residents are not faced "with a serious risk of persecution" ".

The employees of Shpresa feel as if they are at the center of a political dispute. Certain politicians and the media describe Albanian immigrants as economic migrants and criminals, while the employees of this humanitarian organization see them as extremely vulnerable people.

Volunteers in that organization help people who were victims of domestic violence or escaped from forced marriages, as well as women who were trafficked to work as prostitutes, the "Guardian" points out.

"We are under pressure to the limit," said the manager of Shpresa, who wished to remain anonymous to avoid publicity at a time when hostility towards Albanian citizens was expressed, for the British newspaper.

"How can a child be an economic migrant," she asked, describing the case of a boy who was trapped on a cannabis farm.

Some young Albanians have described the discrimination they face since news broke that an increasing number of Albanian citizens are arriving in Britain by boat. "In 2015, people thought that we came to take jobs or social assistance. Now they say that we are all criminals", said one young man. "This is not a good time to look for a job if you have the word Albanian in your resume. We feel like the sacrificial lambs of Britain's political crisis over migration”.

The young man, who introduced himself as Ardur, said that eight years ago, as a 17-year-old, he did not want to leave his family, but that he was forced to because of a violent family dispute. "They don't see us as legitimate asylum seekers. People assume that we came in search of a better life. It is true for some - the people are poor, the country is corrupt and full of crime and hatred and there is no future for young people there. But I came here because my life was in danger," he said.

His asylum application was rejected, but instead of returning home - his parents and younger brothers had since fled to Germany - he began working in London's underground economy. He spent months working and living in a car wash, sleeping in a garage, near chemicals, earning $10 a day. After that, he worked in construction.

"I did the most difficult jobs, carrying bricks to the third floor, destroying buildings; sometimes they didn't pay me at the end of the week because they know I can't complain to anyone or go to the police. The young Albanian does not look like a victim of smugglers because we are white Europeans and people assume we are Polish construction workers. No one will call the immigration service because of us, no one even assumes that we are being exploited," he told "The Guardian".

The problems he faces are typical, said the manager of Špresa. "There is a well-known narrative about girls and young women who are trafficked and sexually exploited, but we also see a huge number of young men who are exploited.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak signed an agreement on cooperation with the Albanian government in December and said that new guidelines will be issued to immigration workers to make it "crystal clear" that "Albania is a safe country". He said that members of the border forces will be sent to Tirana to help suppress the activities of organized criminals, that the threshold will be raised for someone to be declared a victim of modern slavery, and that a new unit of "400 specialists" will be appointed to speed up the prosecution. cases so that "during the coming months, thousands of Albanians would be returned home" by weekly flights.

The manager of Špresa says that she fears that the focus is misdirected. "We are concerned that the government is not fighting criminals, but people who are exploited and abused by criminals."