FLASH
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Posing as Ukrainian refugees to enter the UK, taking advantage of loopholes in border control systems and a wave of solidarity for the ongoing war.
This is the new strategy that human traffickers are using to make it as easy as possible for migrants to enter the UK. In addition to the already known route through the English Channel, a 'safer' route has been identified which includes Ireland as the exit door to Europe.
The Common Travel Area (CTA) allows British and Irish citizens to travel freely between the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Great Britain and the Channel Islands. It is precisely this that is being used by human traffickers as a "safe corridor" for irregular migrants with the help of false documents, including forged Ukrainian passports.
The discovery of this new method came after an operation at Belfast Airport in which an Iranian national was arrested as he tried to board a flight to Britain using a fake Ukrainian passport. Immigration agents immediately noticed discrepancies in the documents presented, in particular multiple travel stamps cleverly forged to demonstrate that the man had crossed several borders. After several minutes of questioning, the man confessed that he was Iranian and not Ukrainian.
Investigations have revealed that criminal gangs offer complete travel packages with prices ranging from 5,000 to 8,000 euros. These include the flight from a European city, false documents, transport to Belfast and a ticket to the final destination in the UK. For traffickers, the real cost is around one thousand euros, which makes this activity extremely profitable.
At the beginning of this year, the movement of immigrants was mainly in the opposite direction, that is from the United Kingdom to Ireland due to the so-called "Rwanda Effect", where the London government threatened to send asylum seekers to the African country. As a result, many migrants had started going to Ireland to avoid deportation and asylum applications in the country had increased dramatically, going from less than 5,000 in 2019 to over 17,500 in 2023.
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