Albanians pay over 43 million euros to traffickers to enter Britain by dinghy in January-September 2022

Ergysi, a young man from Mati, who was previously working in Italy, spent 5000 thousand euros from his savings in an Albanian bank to cross from France to Britain by dinghy, to join his peers from Albania, who are already in London.

He said he paid £3,500 to smugglers to cross the English Channel in April 2022.

"That day, 12 rafts left France for Britain. There were 70 of us in our raft. There were also women, and there were even two small children. Almost 60 of us were Albanians. The boat was steered by a friend of mine (30 years old) from Shkodra. This one was oriented with "google offline", it was very good that it took us 3 and a half hours. We were lucky as others have stayed in the water for 24 hours as they did not know how to orient themselves. A drone accompanied us all the time. They all paid £3,500. They told us that during 2021 it was a little cheaper, but since the demands from Albanians increased a lot in 2022, the prices also increased".

I chose this way as the truck costs a lot now, it has caught 25 thousand pounds. "That's what a cousin of mine paid who has a phobia of water," said Ergysi.

An illegal emigration network from Albania to Great Britain is depleting the country more and more of human capital, but in addition the emigrants take large sums of money for themselves, most of which goes to pay the traffickers.

British media and official immigration statistics show that in the 9th month of 2022, January-September, more than 13 thousand Albanians sought asylum in Britain, where 11 thousand of them entered by raft.

The average payment for the passage was from 3-4 thousand pounds per person depending on the days.

Taking into account the official reports on the Albanian immigrants who entered Britain by raft and the payments per person, traffickers have benefited about 38.5 million pounds (43 million euros) in payments from Albanian immigrants alone for the 9th month of 2022.

More detailed data from counties with high emigration to Britain show that young people often use credit channels to cover travel expenses.

In the district of Kukës, microcredit agencies are faced with an unusual demand for loans that are used for emigration. This service has worked since many of them have repaid the loan after leaving.

In other cases, the sums were secured by debt from relatives, with savings from work, but there was another way of financing, says Drini, one of the many young people who left. He said that the grass house cultivation network often pays for young people.

Drini, a young man from Tropoja, said he worked for almost three months in pubs in London until he paid off his debt and has now chosen to focus on a legitimate job. Drini had finished his higher studies in Tirana but found it impossible to find a job that paid more than 50,000 lek in Tirana. According to him, this amount was insufficient to start life. /Monitor