POTENTIAL plans by the government to fast-track the removal of asylum-seekers from countries designated “safe” have been branded “unworkable” by campaigners. 

Home Secretary Suella Braverman is said to be drawing up a list of countries deemed safe, including Albania, with claims from its citizens presumed to be “clearly unfounded.” 

Under the plans, reported in the Times, people arriving to Britain in small boats from listed countries would be detained at reception centres, where their asylum claims would be expedited. 

If refused, the applicant would be denied the right to appeal and subsequently deported as part of the plans aimed at stopping people crossing the Channel in small boats. 

However, refugee rights campaigners warned that such a policy could be unlawful, and risks leading to “more inconsistency, more work and more chaos” in the already failing asylum system. 

Refugee Council chief executive Enver Solomon described the plans as “yet more unworkable posturing that won’t stop people taking dangerous journeys to reach the UK.”

He added: “Governments have been trying proposals like this for decades and they have been found to be unlawful.”

The Home Office said it will continue to “use every tool at our disposal to deter illegal migration, including returning those with no right to be in the UK to their home country.”

But Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director Steve Valdez-Symonds said the problem will not be fixed by government attempts to “avoid responsibility.”
 
“It may seem like good politics to scapegoat Albanian nationals to distract from the utter mess the government has created, but this is just another attempt to avoid responsibility,” he argued.  

“To presume someone is safe rather than properly assess the risks causes more inconsistency, more work and more chaos.”

Refugee Action chief executive Tim Naor Hilton warned that fast-track schemes risk people being sent back to countries where their lives are in danger.

“People’s claims must be individually assessed and based purely on their need for protection and not on assumptions based on their nationality,” he said.

It comes after a group of Tory MPs wrote to PM Rishi Sunak earlier this week, demanding that Albanian asylum-seekers be summarily returned. 

Campaigners have condemned the targeting of Albanian nationals, highlighting official figures showing half of applicants from the country are granted asylum in Britain, with the figure rising to over 90 per cent for women and children.