Thread by @SaggersT

1. Thread on #Albanian #child #asylum seekers...
Listening to @bbc5live this morning I feel commentators are wrongly describing the situation - which involves a staggering number of children. My thoughts:
Many are not fleeing anything in Albania - making asylum moot. However...

2. Most will have been groomed and recruited in Albania by OC groups ahead of travel to the UK. Their reality is not "child asylum seekers" but "child victims of human trafficking" - who need safeguarding, not 'processing'.
The fact so many go/have gone missing is inevitable.

3. But they are not conventionally missing, they are under the control of the very OCGs that trafficked them to the UK. And if children - they are abducted in that context.
Further complexity, many will also be 18+ and misrepresented as children. For those U18, a matter of time.

@pritipatel is correct to say tests needed to establish age, because Albanian OCGs know exactly how to play our system.
What she calls for will act as a child/YP trafficking deterrent, reducing the scale of Albania origin exploitation.
It's part of organised modern slavery.

5. It's not safe to put these children into foster care as OCGs with likely descend upon these settings to retrieve the children & YP, putting wider well-being at risk.
We have to stop processing these 'unaccompanied' children as asylum seekers - that's totally the goal of OCGs.

6. We need to treat them as victims of human trafficking and work closer with the willing Albanian government to repatriate them safely and deliver education programmes to mitigate the grooming and false representations of life in the UK.