“I feel very excited about my future,” she told us. “I feel safe here.” Iva said she ran from the truck when it arrived in England, hid and was then picked up by a friend. He said the Romanian driver never got the £18,000 he expected. She is now trying to register her arrival with the Home Office on its dedicated hotline – tapping into a system she knows could take years to process her application. But he thinks it will be worth the wait, telling us that life in Albania is unbearable. I asked Iva, 31, a stockbroker in Albania, why she would make such a dangerous journey in the back of a truck. He said: “It doesn’t make sense, but when you see Albania and the opportunities it gives to young people it will make sense. “I just want to live in a happy environment. I just want to live in a safe environment. I want to live in a society that is well structured and well organized. I don’t want to live in chaos anymore.” “See us as worthy people” Iva is part of what Home Secretary Suella Braverman called an “invasion” of migrants, with numbers coming from Albania soaring. The vast majority travel in small boats, paying smugglers to take them through the canal – like Iva’s boyfriend, 26-year-old Denis Arapi, who is also from Albania. Iva and Denis, who say they are both university educated, told us they wanted to speak to Sky News because of the “stigma” surrounding Albanian asylum seekers. “Why should we see immigrants as a problem,” Dennis said. “Start seeing us as worthy people.” The British government has said Albania is a safe country and too many asylum seekers are abusing the system by claiming they are victims of modern slavery. He also pledged to break the “business model” of smugglers. Image: Denis Arapi How smugglers recruit Dennis gave us a rare insight into how smugglers convince people to join their criminal gangs in the UK. Denis, who worked at a private hospital as a coordinator in Albania, said when he crossed the channel in July – he spoke to other Albanians on the boat and half of them planned to seek asylum but take cash jobs in the construction industry while they waited to be processed their requirements. It claims a quarter – the younger men on board – were told they would link up with the criminal gangs that smuggled them into the UK and disappear from the asylum system. Dennis said: “They (smugglers) know the system is broken and are using it as leverage to get people to do it. “They say ‘you’ll never get asylum papers’. They say ‘you’ll never integrate into society’. They say ‘There are cases that have been going on for more than three years and they don’t find work leave.’ They tell you this. They convince you that you come here and there is nothing else you can do (except join the gangs). UK authorities say that of the more than 12,000 Albanians who have arrived in the UK so far this year, around 10,000 are single, adult men. Very difficult to get a visa Denis said it is very difficult to get a visa to come to the UK: “Seeking asylum is the only option to be here.” He said without money in your bank account, you can’t get a visa. “I expected, when I arrived, the asylum system in Britain would assess the migrant.” Use Chrome browser for more accessible video player 3:19 Why are Albanians coming to the UK? Iva said: “I want to do legal things here. I am a decent person. I can integrate into society. “I chose the right way to live my life. Albanians have a bad reputation for this, but I am one of the Albanians who do not belong to the smuggling society and I would not choose this path.”
