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re: 60 Migrants Inc,Newborn & 12 Children Dead After Boat Falls Apart Near Italy
Channel Crossings: Albanian Migrants Recruited to The UK by Gangs
The BBC has heard evidence that Albanian drug gangs are using the migrant camps of northern France as a recruitment ground, offering to pay the passage of those prepared to work in the UK drugs industry on arrival.
Posing as an Albanian migrant, we contacted two people-smugglers advertising for clients on the video-sharing platform TikTok.
BBC News 4 NOV 2022.
Albanians account for almost a third of the 39,000 people who have arrived in small boats so far this year, according to UK government figures.
Senior police and immigration officials on both sides of the Channel are worried by the growing role of Albanian middlemen in facilitating crossings.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has accused the UK of scapegoating his fellow citizens to excuse its "failed policies" on borders and migration.
The BBC has seen how towns near the Albanian capital Tirana have been left almost empty, and how many young Albanians were being lured to the French coast.
In the French town of Dunkirk this summer, eyewitnesses say Albanians occupied part of the main migrant camp there.
And small hotels around the station - like Hotel Bretagne and Le Lion d'Or - are now established staging posts for Albanian migrants: their doors permanently closed, no staff in sight, a 24-hour phone number pinned to the glass.
These are some of the places Albanian middlemen wait for clients - acting as a critical link with the small boat crossings dominated by Iraqi-Kurdish networks.
"In France, there are people who wait for you," one Albanian man told me, after reaching the UK by small boat this summer. "Everybody in the world knows where to go, if you want to get to England."
Everybody in the world knows where to go, if you want to get to England.
---Albanian migrant Speaking to the BBC
From the street outside Dunkirk station, we spot Kevi at the window of his second-floor room at Le Lion d'Or, as he smokes a cigarette. A new arrival from Albania, 20 years old, and full of nervous energy for the trip ahead.
After just a couple of days here, he has already found someone to organise his crossing and is waiting for the call to leave.
"The weather's no good," he says. "We have to wait maybe two more days."
For Albanian nationals like Kevi, getting to northern France is easy; they have the right to enter the EU as tourists for up to three months without a visa.
Most arrive by bus or car, urged on by adverts on social media promising help from middlemen on the ground in Brussels, Paris, Calais or Dunkirk.
Both responded within half an hour, with options to pay in France or in England, and guidance for getting to Belgium or France, where a fixer would make contact. The message from both of them was: "It's easy."
"The middlemen approach you and you just go with the cheapest offer," Eraldo Harkicaj, an Albanian journalist, told me.
Eraldo recently posed undercover as a migrant for Albania's Piranja TV channel. He said most Albanian middlemen stayed away from the main migrant camp in Dunkirk, where Kurdish and other networks wield control.
"When we were inside the camp, we realised that the Albanians did not have any real power. Everything was run by Kurds," Eraldo told me. "The whole organisation in the camp and the transportation of people towards England was done by the Kurds."
Graphic showing the nationalities of people arriving into the UK by small boat: Albania 2,165; Afghanistan 2,066; Iran 1,723; Iraq 1,573; Syria 1,041; Eritrea 850; Sudan 460; Egypt 305; Vietnam 279; Kuwait 198
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