The United Kingdom’s Home Affairs Select Committee has encouraged the government to promote the availability of work visas to fill labor shortages in Britain as an alternative to asylum for Albanians.
The Committee’s comments came following the recent report which showed that in the first nine months of last year, only 325 Albanians benefited from the UK’s work visas, VisaGuide.World reports.
According to the Committee, there was a perceived difficulty in obtaining work in Britain in a legal way which could be driving people towards clandestine migration routes, As InfoMigrants reports.
The figures of the Committee found that there is little evidence that citizens of Albania are at risk in their own country and need international protection, in spite of the fact that as of June last year, over half of Albanians’ asylum claims in the UK were successful or 51 percent.
This was a far higher rate than the one registered for Albanians in several European countries last year, including Germany, in which country no Albanians were granted international protection.
“Albania is a safe country, it is not at war and is a candidate to join the European Union,” the report of the committee notes which initiated its investigations in July last year. At the same time, it says that “some Albanian citizens making asylum claims will have been trafficked, and women are disproportionately at risk from this form of crime.”
According to the Info Migrants report, of the total of 45,755 migrants who crossed the Channel to the United Kingdom last year, over a quarter of them were Albanians. The same shows that during the course of 2022, the number of Albanian citizens crossing the Channel went from 800 to a total of 12,301, an increase that, according to the report, was unexpected and unexplained.
The Committee in its report found that the economic reasons were a key driver that led Albanians to head to Britain. Albanians choose the United Kingdom in order to access improved job prospects as well as higher incomes, according to the report, stating that citizens of this country will continue to come to Britain until their country becomes wealthier.
As a result, the Committee encouraged the government of the UK to promote work visas as an alternative to asylum.
In order to fill in the application, workers are required to have a sponsor and also meet other conditions, among them being over 18 and also having enough money in order to support their stay in the UK. This means that applicants are required to have at least €1,486.
The sponsor will give the worker a certificate of the sponsorship reference number that must be attached to the application, meaning that they have to stay working in that specific job with the same sponsor for the duration of the visa.
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