Don’t travel to UK on dinghy, says deported Albanian boat migrant

AN ALBANIAN small boat migrant who was sent back home has admitted he regrets paying people traffickers for the wasted trip.

The young man, named only as ‘Artan’, confessed he was an economic migrant on arrival. He did not claim asylum and was swiftly sent back to Tirana.

‘If you enter a foreign country without proper documentation, visas, stamps, of course you are entering illegally,’ Artan said.

‘I said to the woman interviewing me “I know I have entered illegally, but I have not come here for fun. I have come because I want to work”. I didn’t seek asylum. I told them I was an economic migrant.’

He said there were legal ways for Albanians to enter the UK but he was in a hurry and wanted to earn money to help his disabled father: ‘I went for the quickest and cheapest way. The visa should be cheaper but I needed help with the application and people charge more for that than the dinghy journey.’

Artan, who is in his early 30s, told the BBC he had paid Kurdish people smugglers around £3,500, borrowing money from friends and family.

‘It was an unimaginable terror. For certain I’d say don’t choose the dinghy,’ he said.

‘If there is a legal way, with a visa, then yes leave, but please never think about leaving on a dinghy,’ he said.

He claimed that during the trip to the UK the traffickers were ‘armed with knives and pistols’ and repeatedly threatened their customers. ‘ The journey was torture,’ he added. ‘A French police boat appeared 20 minutes into our journey.

‘They accompanied us from a distance of maybe 200 metres, just observing, which reassured us. They stayed for three hours, maybe more. Then we crossed into UK waters and called British police.’

He was held at Manston processing centre, near Ramsgate in Kent, where he was told he would face rapid deportation.

‘I cried for the entire journey, from the moment I got on that bus and realised I was being deported, until I arrived in Albania,’ he said. More than

‘I cried the entire journey’

42,000 migrants have crossed the Channel since the start of the year, including at least 12,000 Albanians.

The UK signed a returns agreement with Tirana last year which allows criminals and immigration offenders to be sent back more easily.

A further deal for a fast-track removals scheme, announced in August, is still under negotiation.

Immigration minister Robert Jenrick yesterday told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme: ‘We have good relations with them and our officials have been in Albania very recently.’