Suella Braverman has been warned of a new wave of Albanian migrants crossing the Channel this summer, despite the crackdown on small boats.
The Home Secretary has been given an internal survey, commissioned by the British Embassy in Tirana, which shows that half of young Albanians want to cross the Channel to Britain this summer.
The poll, based on 1,800 households in Kukes, the main migrant area in northern Albania, found that half of young men aged 17 to 22 wanted to leave their homeland and come to Britain, despite the risks of crossing of the Channel.
The revelation underscores the seasonal nature of illegal migration by Albanians, as the country’s main surge last year only occurred from June through September, when more than 10,000 of Albania’s 12,000 will cross the Channel in 2022.
It comes as Rishi Sunak and Ms Braverman hailed a 90 percent drop in the number of Albanians arriving by small boat so far this year as proof that their crackdown on small boats was working. The number has dropped from 2,165 in January to June 2022, to 151 in the first five months of 2023.
Ms Braverman told MPs that despite the drop in numbers, the government was “not complacent” and would continue to monitor border crossings by Albanians.
