The first of two centres has been opened under the plan of Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to remove asylum seekers to two overseas sites in Albania.
No asylum-seekers will be moved there until both are operational. The project is scheduled to cost €650 million or more.
A number of European leaders, including Keir Starmer, have praised the initiative, saying they will consider similar schemes.
There are differences from the notorious Rwanda plan, under which people would be dumped in Africa with no hope of an asylum hearing. The Albanian centres would, in effect, operate as if they were still in Italy, and process asylum requests for Italian asylum. Albania’s European location (only 100 miles from Italy) also provides some opportunity to “try again” should the asylum attempt fail.
The fundamental cruelty and false logic remains. “Offshore processing” is an attempt to dis incentivise migrants from travelling to the country in question, by increasing the potential risk of being further displaced. This ignores the underlying fact that in the majority of cases, migrants are forced to travel through dangerous and illegal routes in order to claim asylum wherever they can.
Human Rights Watch calls the scheme “a costly, cruel farce… A model of mismanagement and a blueprint for abuse”.
Our demands remain: free movement across borders. British and Italian workers have more in common with the migrants arriving at the borders than with the bosses profiting from their suffering.
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