UK must Leave ECHR to stop illegal invasion

Reform UK Leader Richard Tice writes for Heaver News.

Back in mid-2012, when London hosted the Olympics and the Queen prepared to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee, a fresh faced David Cameron was able to survey the political landscape with some pride.

Voters had no reason to be particularly concerned about the 180 Albanian prisoners in UK jails – around 100 of whom the government promised to send home. Illegal immigration in the back of lorries was a challenge, but numbers were unknown and rarely hit the headlines.

Fast forward to 2022 and the picture is very different. When the weather is good and the seas are calm – which has been the case all this summer –hundreds, sometimes thousands of fit young men make their way across the English Channel in boats. So far this year, more than 25,000 have arrived on our shores, double last year’s figure.

More arrived in August than the whole of 2020. By the end of 2022, the Home Office believes as many as 60,000 people will have made the perilous crossing: not far off the equivalent of the entire British Army.

Within this number, I exposed a shocking trend. Thanks to a public spirited insider who risked his job and perhaps own safety to reveal the truth about who is really coming here, we now know that the single biggest group of “refugees” are not Syrians and Afghans fleeing war and terror: they are Albanian. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the government kept this a secret.

After all, if the individuals seeking “refuge” in the UK via this dangerous and illegal route are not poverty stricken victims of conflict and strife, would the long suffering British taxpayer be quite as forgiving? Following my expose, the government has been forced to admit that about 6 in 10 of the Channel crossings are by Albanians.

No wonder Ministers did not want us to see the military intelligence documents I obtained, showing that a shocking four in ten Channel migrants are from this perfectly peaceful part of Eastern Europe. A NATO member state that is well on its way to joining the EU. It is cheap and easy for Albanians wishing to visit the UK to obtain a visa for six months.

They can come here to work perfectly legally, under schemes like the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme. Flights are inexpensive. So why don a lifejacket and scramble aboard an overcrowded and ill equipped dinghy controlled by criminal gangs,  unless you are up to no good? Much cheaper and easier to hop on a Whizz air flight from Tirana to Gatwick or Luton, for a few hundred quid  – a tenth of the fee demanded by criminal gang bosses, with an excellent safety record to boot?

Since 2012, the Albanian prison population in the UK has soared nine-fold,  to well over 1,500. Last July 2021, Justice Minister Chris Philp enthusiastically announced a new prisoner return scheme to Albania, suggesting British taxpayers (generous as ever) might help pay for a new jail there. No surprise that six months later, just 24 of the easiest targets had gone home.

At the current rate of growth, within just 4 years, there will be more Albanians in UK prisons than Albanians in Albanian jails, where there are currently 5,000 inmates. Instead of supporting Albania to build a new prison there, we might as well just build a special one for them here. Indeed, one of Albania’s fastest growing exports successes is sending its criminals to the UK to end up in our jails.

The brutal truth? The UK is becoming Albania’s Alcatraz. For the Albanian government, all this works beautifully. Let undesirables make their way to the UK and hey presto! They reduce their own crime problem.

The new Government must finally do what we have been calling for: leave the politically biased ECHR. No ifs, no buts. Suella Braverman, our new Home Secretary spoke about it, as did the Prime Minister. Will these Tories actually do what they say, or will it turn out to be just more waffle, as we have seen before.

If not, then they will never stop the invasion of illegal immigrants and criminals.

Lawless Britain has become the softest of targets for the hardest of Albanian criminal masterminds. Perhaps we should see how they get on in Rwanda? Better still, let Albania build and pay for its own Alcatraz.