Former UKIP party leader, following up media reports on the rising number of Albanians illegally entering the UK, says migrants are not ‘poor and desperate;’ but in many cases ‘aggressive’.

British Rightist Ex-Politician Farage Criticised for Attacks in Albanian Migrants

Photo UKIP Leader Nigel Farage speaks at a rally outside parliament in London, 14 May 2011. Photo: EPA/ANDY RAIN

Statements made British rightist former politician Nigel Farage about Albanian illegal migrants to the UK have caused anger on social media, especially on Twitter, after a statement in which he said: “Now that one in ten foreign-born parents in the UK are Albanian, any guess as to the ratio in five years’ time?” Albanian institutions have not commented on the statements of the former UKIP party leader.

Sidita Kushi an assistent professor in Massachusetts, retweeted: “Put in context of the whole UK population, this ‘rise in Albanians’ is negligible and bordering on sheer insignificance”.

Farage’s tweet cited the UK organization Migration Watch that referred to a Daily Mail article that said “Albanians are among the most common foreign–born parents in UK for the first time”.

Farage is a frequent guest in the region, especially in Serbia.

In a video published three days ago, Farage also said Albanians trying to cross the English Channel in order to enter the UK were not “poor desperate people” as mainstream media like the BBC “is trying to portray them”. “No, they are young men and many of them actually pretty aggressive,” he said.

Farage, 58, led the right-wing UKIP party and later the Brexit party until 2021. he is currently a broadcaster. He played a key role in winning the Brexit referendum in 2016 which took the UK out of the EU.

Concern about the growth in illegal migration from Albania was put in the spotlight last week after media reports by the tabloid Daily Mail among others, quoting UK military intelligence documents, claimed four in 10 recent illegal migrants to Britain were from Albania.

The report said that of the 2,863 migrants transported into the country between June 1 and July 12, 1,075 – or 37.5 per cent – were Albanian. The reports were republished by local media in Albania.

“Albania is a prospective EU member, already a NATO member, lots of Brits go on Albania on holiday, I mean no one from Albania qualifies to be a refugee”, Farage said, adding that Albanian migration is being organized by “very serious criminal gangs”.

Communications expert Edlira Gjoni, based in Tirana, accused Farage of “hate speech”.

“Note that the UK invests millions of pounds in fighting hate speech at home and abroad. And when this language comes systematically from a politician (and Nigel Farage is loved by more than 51 per cent of the British, as Brexit proved), then this approach goes beyond personal dimensions, it turns into an institutional attitude by the English!” she wrote on Facebook on Thursday. “Why defamation, misinformation and generalizing labels for Albanians?” she asked.

Last year, Albania’s Ministry of Justice and UK Justice Minister Chris Philip signed a Prisoner Transfer Agreement in London under which Albanian prisoners in the UK can be returned to Albania and banned from entering the UK again.

The agreement started to be implemented this year and is ongoing, with some Albanian prisoners being returned to Albania.

Also in July last year, the UK and Albania signed a separate agreement regulating the removal of Albanians illegally residing in the UK.

BIRN asked the Albania Border and Migration Police about the implementation of the second agreement and was told that the Albanian institutions are cooperating with UK institutions on the repatriation of the people who are staying there illegally. “During 2021 20 operations were conducted in total and 497 citizens repatriated. During the first six months of 2022 there have been 16 operations in total with 443 citizens being returned,” they said.

The UK government recently said it removed 23 foreign criminals on a charter flight to Albania on July 14. Since March 2021, it said, more than 10,000 people had been removed from the UK by both scheduled and charter flights, with 86 flights chartered to 13 different countries.

BIRN recently reported a noted spike in ads on TikTok advertising people smuggling to the UK.

Source link: balkaninsight.com