Select committee: Home Affairs Committee
Conclusion 5
Second Report - Asylum and migration: Albania
Published 12 Jun 2023
Paragraph 38
Addressed to Home Office
Home Affairs Committee Migration and asylum All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The long-term solution to migration from countries such as Albania where emigration is driven not by oppression or war but by absence of jobs and decent incomes lies in supporting such countries to become wealthier. There is no case for special treatment for Albania in provision of work visas: its citizens are as entitled as any others to apply for those available in the UK. There may, though, be a case for promoting more actively in Albania and elsewhere the provision of short-term work visas in sectors in which the UK needs workers—seasonal agriculture or construction, for example— with the specific aim of enabling some transfer of wealth to countries from which asylum applications should not normally be countenanced but from which substantial numbers of people seek opportunities elsewhere. Such a policy might be an investment to reduce emigration in the longer term from comparatively poor countries that would in turn reduce pressure on asylum systems designed to cope with refugees rather than the economic migrants who will always seek to improve their circumstances.
From: Home Affairs Committee, Second Report - Asylum and migration: Albania (HC 197), paragraph 38, 12 June 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 8 September 2023 (deadline 12 August 2023).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government response sets out its position on the Committee's Albania report without framing it as accepting or rejecting the recommendations as a whole, stating that it is "on track to clear the historic asylum backlog by the end of 2023" and that it does not intend to publish asylum decision data weekly.
- On work visas, the government says the Seasonal Worker route "is not and has never been designed to act as a lever to reduce illegal migration", and that it does not believe it would operate effectively in that capacity.
- On the UK-Albania Joint Communique, the UK commits to support Albanian structures for referring victims and to "provide investment in additional protection services", with funded reintegration support for up to 240 individuals between January 2023 and March 2025.
- On the Albanian grant rate, it says direct comparison with other European countries cannot be undertaken, and that the rate fell to 34% in the year ending March 2023, or 5% when withdrawn cases are taken into account.
- On the Committee's request for quarterly progress reports, it points to existing Home Office published statistics and says it does "not intend to do this on a weekly basis" for decisions on asylum claims.