Government U Turn on Albanian Asylum Seekers
At the end of August Priti Patel, the former Home Secretary, announced new plans for Albanian asylum seekers who cross the English Channel to seek safety in the UK. She said that their asylum claims would be ‘fast tracked’ with the aim of immediate removal, and suggested that these asylum claims were ‘spurious ’. It was brutal, lacking in compassion and unfair. Worse, it was potentially illegal. Recent figures show that 53 per cent of asylum claims made by Albanians in the UK are accepted, meaning they most definitely are genuine, and in any case asylum claims must be …