Albanian ambassador admits Channel migrants are ‘pretending’ to be modern slavery victims but are being duped by TikTok into thinking they can start businesses in the UK
- Qirjako Qirko he spoke to an entrepreneur who crossed Channel to set up a bar
- He said people were being fooled by ads suggesting that the UK was a ‘paradise’
- He also admitted that some migrants had been ‘pretending’ to be slavery victims
Some Albanians crossing the Channel are economic migrants ‘pretending’ to be modern slavery victims, the country’s ambassador admitted today.
Qirjako Qirko said he would support a plan to rapidly return migrants claiming to be victims of slavery to Albania because of its status as ‘a safe country’.
The ambassador also said some of his countrymen are being duped by social media adverts into thinking they can start businesses in the UK after arriving illegally.
Addressing the Home Affairs select committee, he revealed he’d spoken to a man who ran a bar in Albania and tried to set one up in Britain after seeing a TikTok ad.
Qirjako Qirko said he had recently spoken to a bar owner who left Albania thinking he could set up a similar venue in Britain after seeing an advert on TikTok
Asked whether Albanians had been arriving in the UK illegally for economic reasons, Mr Qirko said: ‘I have been in contact with some people asking for our embassy services.
‘And some of them explained that yes, we are victims of TikTok and Facebook, we have come here because we thought it was easy to start a business.
‘Yesterday, I was talking to a gentleman from the south of Albania. He was running a small bar then he said he saw on TikTok that there was an opportunity to open the same kind of business in the UK. But after three weeks I realised it was not possible so he came back to Albania.’
Asked by committee chair Diana Johnson whether Albanians were arriving in small boats for economic reasons, he replied: ‘Yes, people are coming for the same reason that the Italians, the French and the Germans… to seek better opportunities’.
He said many of the arrivals were young, adding: ‘People have been coming back because they realise the UK isn’t the paradise they thought it was.
‘In general they are youngsters who are very easy to manipulate based on what they see on social media. The reality when they arrive is different.’
There has been a dramatic rise in the number of Albanians crossing the Channel, and they accounted for a third of the 44,000 who made the journey from January to September this year.
Over this period, a total of 3,432 Albanians claimed to be slavery victims – making them the largest nationality using the Modern Slavery Act – with three-quarters of these claims coming from adults.
UK officials, including the National Crime Agency, have repeatedly raised concerns that some migrants are exploiting the system by falsely claiming to be slavery victims in order to stay in the UK while they have their claims processed.
Mr Qirko said today that ‘it seems that the people who are arriving here pretend to be victims of modern slavery’.
Asked by Tory MP Tim Loughton if it would be better if Albanian migrants claiming to be slavery victims were returned from the UK, the ambassador said, ‘yes’, before backing plans for a system to fast track returns.
During today’s session, Mr Qirko rejected a suggestion that Albania should pay for migrants being provided with housing in Britain.
He also refused to comment on a suggestion that the UK should automatically reject all asylum claims from Albania because ‘it’s not my problem’.
Finally, he claimed Albanian children were being bullied in British school and called for the ‘campaign of discrimination’ against his countrymen to stop.
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