Despite initial claims to the contrary, Albanian migrants who illegally enter Britain on small boats will not be sent home if they claim asylum, the UK Home Office has now admitted.
Illegal migrants from Albania who cross into Britain on small boats will not be sent back home if they decide to claim asylum, the UK Home Office has now admitted.
With the number of illegal arrivals from the country spiking in recent months, the British government had previously planned to put illegal Albanians on the fast track to deportation, having made an agreement with the European Muslim majority state to streamline the process for removing the migrants.
However, in what appears to be the latest example of the so-called “Conservative Party” failing to secure the UK’s borders, the Home Office has now admitted such a plan is not legally possible.
According to a report by The Guardian, a letter from the ministry’s legal department has confirmed that the plan is not actionable in the case of any Albanian who claims asylum in the UK.
The Telegraph reports that as many as nine in ten Albanian migrants who arrive in Britain via small boats go on to claim asylum, meaning that the UK’s harebrained scheme dreamt up by former Home Office Secretary Priti Patel to quickly remove them will not work in around 90 per cent of cases.
To make matter worse, Care4Calais, the pro-migrant NGO that received the legal letter, has claimed that it also admits that migrants who are either rescued at sea or directed to land by UK authorities cannot be treated as illegal migrants, but as legal entrants into Britain.
As such, for the vast majority of boat migrants who attempt to cross the channel and are rescued by UK authorities, new measures targeting illegal migrants cannot be applied to them.
This latest example of the Conservative Party failing on the issue of border control further serves to cement former Home Office tsar Priti Patel’s legacy of failure, with the former tough-talking Brexiteer failing to ever get a handle on the crisis despite formulating numerous hare-brained schemes to do so.
Much more successful were Patel’s efforts to stifle free speech in Britain, with the senior politician being only months away from implementing a further crackdown on even legal speech online before she was unceremoniously forced out of office by the newly minted Truss government.
However, news that the vast majority of boat migrants will be rendered immune to British efforts to dissuade them from entering the country illegally nevertheless does not bode well for future border control efforts under Liz Truss.
The Home Office’s new head, Suella Braverman, has already promised to expand the so-far ineffective restrictions on illegal arrivals implemented by Patel, though it now appears unclear how she expects to repel the tens of thousands of arrivals under the current legal circumstances.
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