Tirana, Albania. Britain is talking with several countries to host rejected asylum seekers as they wait to be deported, the UK prime minister said Thursday.

Prime Minister Kier Starmer said on a visit to Albania that the return hub concept was a “pretty important innovation” that could more effectively tackle migrant inflows. He did not name the countries he was in discussions with or offer more details.

Albania already has a five-year agreement with Italy to shelter up to 36,000 migrants annually while Rome fast-tracks their asylum requests. Under the deal, Italy would take back any migrants whose requests have been rejected, and they will likely be repatriated. Children and pregnant women aren't covered by the plan.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said the agreement with Italy was a “one-off” issue and that Tirana had turned down several requests for the same deals with other countries.

The British prime minister said a joint task force with Albania has helped significantly reduce the number of Albanian migrants trying to reach the UK. He added that his government is in talks with Western Balkan countries to set up similar task forces, aiming to cut through the tangle of bureaucracy that hinders progress in reducing migrant arrivals.

The number of Albanians crossing the English Channel in unsafe inflatable rafts in search of higher-paying jobs has dropped from 12,000 in 2022 to some 600 in 2024.

“Quite an incredible reduction,” Starmer said at a news conference with Rama. “And I think it’s a signal and an example of what can be done when two countries work together in this way.”

Top British officials in 2022 called Albanians’ arrivals “an invasion,” sparking a diplomatic spat. Rama had called that a “crazy narrative” and an attempt to cover up for the UK’s failed border policies. Albanians cannot seek asylum status in the UK, which considers Albania to be a safe country.

In the same year, London and Tirana signed an agreement to return Albanians arriving on boats in the UK. London also has funded projects, especially in northeastern Albania, where most of the illegal newcomers were from.

Rama pledged to continue the partnership with Britain on discouraging migrant arrivals from Albania.

Starmer's visit to Albania is the first by a British prime minister. He will also take part in Friday’s summit of the European Political Community in Tirana, a forum that gathers European leaders with the aim of boosting security and prosperity across the continent.

More Immigrants Rejected at German Borders
Separately in Germany, the government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz has rejected more people at the country’s borders after it stepped up police checks at its frontiers.

Merz, who made tougher migration policy a central plank of his campaign for Germany’s election in February, took office on May 6. The following day, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said more police would be stationed at the border to curb irregular migration, and some asylum-seekers trying to enter Europe’s biggest economy would be turned away.

Speaking on Thursday as he visited the Kiefersfelden crossing on Germany’s southern frontier with Austria, Dobrindt said 739 people were turned back at the borders over the past seven days, a 45 percent increase over the previous week’s figure of 511.

Of the 51 people who sought asylum at the border in the past week, 32 were rejected while the rest were identified as belonging to “vulnerable groups” and allowed into Germany, he said. The previous week, all 44 people who sought asylum at the border were allowed in.

“I want to break the logic of criminal gangs and smugglers who promise people that, in exchange for paying 5,000 ($5,607), 10,000 or 20,000 euros, they will bring them into the German welfare system,” Dobrindt said. “This logic must be broken, and it must be clear that if you are standing at Germany’s border, you don’t automatically come into our country.”

Germany’s previous government already had introduced checks at the country’s borders with neighboring nations, which the new administration is stepping up.

Merz told lawmakers on Wednesday that Germany is and will remain “a country of immigration.”

“But the development of the last 10 years also has shown that we allowed too much uncontrolled immigration, and too much low-qualified migration into our labor market and above all into our social security systems,” he said.