Human traffickers in the English Channel have halved the price of crossing by dinghy to Great Britain, in an effort to cope with the significant drop in requests from illegal Albanian immigrants.
The Telegraph writes that Kurdish gangs have reduced the price of a seat on a small boat to the UK to just £1,500 from £3,500, the cheapest fare for this type of trip since it began in 2018. .
Such a move, the article says, comes after the number of Albanians crossing the English Channel dropped by 90 percent after the new agreement that London signed with Albania in December of last year for a quick repatriation of clandestines.
The Telegraph writes that “the British police forces have increased the attacks on bar houses, which are dominated by Albanian gangs, and the measures against illegal employment have also been toughened”.
British ministers believe these steps have helped stem the tide of illegal Albanian immigration, which last year accounted for a quarter of the 45,755 migrants who crossed the English Channel. The latest Home Office figures show that so far this year, 24,000 migrants have undertaken this journey.
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