Albanian ambassador condemns UK right’s ‘hysterical’ fixation on 2022 migrant surge

Herz — World Desk · 14 August 2026 at 10:06 · 30s summary · 2 min read

What the report says

Albania’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Uran Ferizi, has published a 10-page report targeting Reform UK and the Daily Telegraph. According to The Guardian, he accuses the right-wing populist and Eurosceptic party, formerly known as the Brexit Party, and the newspaper of maintaining a “rampant” and “hysterical” fixation on the 2022 surge in Albanian migration long after the data had consigned it to history.

The report relies mainly on figures from the UK Home Office, the government department responsible for areas including immigration and public security, and research by Oxford University’s Migration Observatory.

The figures behind the dispute

In 2022, 12,658 Albanians crossed the English Channel in small boats. Although the number rose sharply at the time, it represented about 1% of total long-term immigration to the UK that year, according to the embassy’s report.

Albanian small-boat arrivals subsequently fell sharply. The embassy’s analysis says most people in the 2022 cohort have since left the United Kingdom.

Between 2018 and 2025, 65.5% of UK visa applications by Albanians were approved, compared with about 90% for applicants from other western Balkan countries. More than 70,000 Albanian applications were refused over the period.

The report raises the possibility that limited access to legal routes made some young Albanians more vulnerable to smugglers and traffickers. The embassy does not, however, claim that the visa refusal rate caused this vulnerability.

A disputed imprisonment statistic

Ferizi also challenges a 2024 Daily Telegraph article claiming that one in 50 Albanians in the UK was in prison, described as the highest rate of any nationality. He argues that the rate “falls dramatically” when adjusted for age, sex and other relevant factors.