Albanian migrants coached to ‘play’ police
Ministers plan reforms after thousands of new arrivals manipulate the UK’S modern slavery laws
ALBANIAN Channel migrants are being coached to exploit modern slavery laws when they are questioned by police in a “blatant manipulation” of the system, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said.
NCA chiefs said a “significant number” of the Albanians in the UK had entered illegally to work in the “grey” market or for organised criminal drug gangs and were sending home “hundreds of millions of pounds” a year.
They said there was evidence from Albania that migrants were told before they left for the UK that if they chose to join crime gangs and were caught, they should claim asylum as victims of modern slavery and so avoid deportation and remain in the UK.
They disclosed that police forces around the country had also found Albanians arrested for drug offences had used a “standard letter” to be referred to the national referral mechanism under the Modern Slavery Act, buying them at least another year in the UK as their claims are processed.
A record 3,467 Albanians have claimed to be victims of modern slavery so far this year – up by 920 for the whole of 2021 and ahead of any other nationality. They make up more than a quarter of the total number of migrants crossing the Channel in 2022 so far, with 12,000 arriving this year.
Ministers have claimed they are abusing the law and plan a shake-up of the Modern Slavery Act. Reforms could include raising the threshold of proof for a claim to be considered, restricting last-minute applications or banning Albanians from using the loophole.
In a briefing yesterday, Simon Brocklesby, an NCA intelligence officer, said the attraction of the grey economy – where migrants could earn up to £100 a day in construction, hospitality, car washes or barber shops or £1,000 a week as a “gardener” in a cannabis farm – was “pretty overwhelming” for poorer Albanians.
Some, he said, were brought over to work on indoor cannabis groves, where Albanians have usurped the Vietnamese as kingpins in the drug’s production.
Typically, Albanians crossing the Channel in small boats are held in “debt bondage” by criminal gangs and forced to work off the cost of the trip.
“What we do see is that the Albanian criminal community will manipulate the national referral mechanism (NRM) in a fairly extensive fashion,” said Mr Brocklesby.
“We do know anecdotally, [from] speaking to police forces around the country, that if an Albanian illegal migrant is arrested as a cannabis grower then often the first thing they’ll do is claim to be a victim of trafficking.”
“It is in many ways blatant manipulation and is something we believe, from Albania, is instilled in them before they leave for the UK,” added Mr Brocklesby.
Unlike previous migrants from Albania who secretly entered the UK in lorries, they now have to register after arriving in a small boat but then “disappear” into the grey market or criminality sometimes within days of being released from a detention centre on immigration bail.