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LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak vowed Tuesday to clear a backlog of asylum-seeker applications as he announced new measures aimed at stemming the number of migrants crossing the English Channel on small boats to the UK.
Sunak, who is facing growing pressure to limit the growing number of migrants arriving by small boats, said he plans to introduce new legislation early next year to ensure illegal arrivals cannot stay in the country.
The prime minister said he is adding hundreds of workers to process asylum claims and eliminate a backlog of more than 143,000 pending applications by the end of 2023. The additional staff will also focus on speeding up the removal of Albanian migrants. Those who have come through the channel in increasing numbers, Sunak said.
More than 10,000 Albanians have arrived via that route this year to seek asylum, nearly a quarter of the record 44,000 people who made the perilous journey on the busy waterway in small boats to the UK.
In 2020 Britain recorded the arrival of only a few dozen Albanian asylum-seekers. British officials said the big increase could be due to the rise of Albanian criminal organizations operating in northern France.
Sunak and others have insisted that Albania is a “fundamentally safe country” and that most asylum claims from its citizens are unfounded. The country in the Western Balkans is seeking membership of the European Union.
“In the coming months, thousands of Albanians will be repatriated, and we will continue with weekly flights until all Albanians in our backlog are removed,” Sunak told parliament.
He said Britain had received formal assurances from the Albanian government that “they will protect genuine victims and those at risk of re-trafficking, allowing us to detain and return people to Albania with confidence.”
The British government’s focus on Albanian migration recently angered Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, who said the UK should “stop discriminating” against his country’s people for condoning its own migration policy. failures
Sunak added that new laws will be introduced next year to ensure that only those entering the UK through “safe and legal” routes have the right to seek asylum.
He criticized the UN refugee agency, which said the plans would “vastly undermine the global refugee system” and violate international refugee law.
“To limit access to asylum to those arriving through ‘safe, legal channels’, today’s proposals go against the fundamental principles of international solidarity and responsibility-sharing on which the 1951 Refugee Convention was founded.” UNHCR said in a statement.
UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Gillian Triggs, said Sunac’s approach would “cut off access to asylum in the UK for all but a few”. “This would likely leave refugees with no means to establish their status and put them at risk of being forcibly returned to unsafe countries in breach of the Refugee Convention.”
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Follow AP’s coverage of global migration at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
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