Ok parents, I need you to either reassure me or validate my concerns.
My young adult daughter has been invited by a young man to visit his home in Albania. He lives with his family and she’d stay in there home for the week. She met him during a study abroad semester in a different European country. He was in that country working. They have stayed in touch and he recently invited her to visit. She has only met him and not his family.
So, I quickly did a bit of googling and found that Albania is one of the top countries in the world in the sex trafficing industry. They kidnap young girls and well, you know… My daughter is on the naive side so my concerns are heightened. I"m sure you understand. The US State Dept has a webpage on this very topic and reading it did nothing to reassure me that Albania has done much to improve this situation.
It is also a predominently Muslim country and as we are a religion that Muslims historically do not get along with, I am also a bit concerned for this reason as well. I don’t know the religion of the young man.
Comments? Thoughts? Websites I should read?
Thanks in advance.
I’ve lived in Europe, my D currently lives in Europe. I travel a lot. So normally I am not that paranoid.
But this scenario is just a tad hinky and personally I would be cautious.
Please…anyone who knows Albania well—please tell me I am wrong.
Wow, it would never occur to me to be worried about such a thing. How well does she know the young man? Were/ are they romantically involved / dating? Does she want to visit him? I suppose a compromise would be for her to stay at a hotel and visit the family. But if she has developed a real friendship with the boy I don’t see why it would seem hinky that he would invite her to visit.
I’ve never been to Albania and don’t even know if I’ve met an Albanian, so not sure my input is worth very much.
Just out of curiosity, I looked at the US State Department’s travel website to see if there were any warnings about risk of sex crimes against American women traveling to Albania, and there were no such warnings or advisories that I could see. Sex trafficking seems to be an issue in Albania, but there does not seem to be any identifiable risk to American travelers. The state department is generally pretty thorough about outlining the risks that American travelers face. I’m wondering what you saw that led to your worries.
The risks to desperately poor girls in the Philippines, say, who are lured overseas with promises of lucrative employment in bars and nightclubs, for example, just don’t seem to apply to this circumstance.
My D1 lived in the Republic of Georgia (post grad) for a year, rural area, cows everywhere, walked alone within the town, even at night, often traveled by herself via rickety transport, sometimes stayed by herself in the capital city, and I basically held my breath the whole time. Up to that point, I never thought she had much safety savvy. We all learned there are good folks, good families, educated folks, ways to stay safe, in all sorts of places.
I’d want to know where- city or miles from anywhere? What can you learn about the family and the travel plans? Is he educated, what’s his work?
In that part of the world, some families truly value being hospitable. But you need more info. For all we know, he’s hosted other friends over the years.
I’d want to know a lot more about the young man she was visiting and his family. Also, I would wonder if the fact that he is bringing a young woman (your D) home for a longer visit might mean more to the young man/his family than your D has in mind. (My D is in Europe and recently received a similar invitation–not to Albania–and turned it down because of what it might unintentionally indicate about her relationship with the young man–which, for her, is “just friends.”) How well does she really know this guy? I would be uneasy about it, too. What if she met a student at an out of state college in the US, and he invited her to visit his family for a week in yet another (far away) state? How would you feel about that? I’d be uneasy about that unless they were engaged or she had another friend (or friends) with her.
If it were me, that article would not make me worried about the safety of my US citizen daughter traveling as a tourist to Albania, since it concerns Albanian victims who are lured to other countries with promises of employment. It would give me a lot of comfort that the US State Department has NOT identified this as a risk to American tourists. There may be other reasons to be concerned about travel to Albania, but, personally, this document would not cause me undue concern.
She would be staying in a place near the main airport which in near the capital. I don’t know the town just now. I do not believe that they are currently or ever were romantically involved.
This could be a perfectly nice, friendly guy from a wonderful family. But she shouldn’t be naive about it. In some cultures, men do not tend to be “just friends” with women. Also, American women studying abroad may tend to have a certain reputation among some European men. (She shouldn’t be surprised if someone providing hospitality might expect something in return.) If she has no other contacts in the area, doesn’t speak the language, what could she do if something went wrong? (I wonder if his parents would allow his sister to visit a man–a stranger to them–in another country?) I’d want a lot more info. before I could feel comfortable.
Seems like the concern could be more about the specific guy than with the country of Albania, which does not appear to be a high risk country (no civil war or conflict, high HDI, secular government with freedom of religion, population is not extremely religious).
If you are Jewish, then you may want to read about the history of Albania protecting its tiny Jewish community from the Nazis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Albania . Albania also has large Christian (Catholic and Orthodox) communities. However, all religions were suppressed equally during Hoxha’s rule.
I’m just going to throw this out. Could you contact a university or some place and see if there is someone there that speaks Albanian and then have them call the family? My dd has traveled solo quite a bit but this would make me nervous too.
I’d be concerned about daughter going to Albania to meet the guy on his turf and at a location and setting you are unsure of. People lie and can’t always be trusted. He wasn’t a student in Europe who had at least been screened a little bit by some school officials, he was just working in Europe apparently away from the country he said was his home, Albania.
I’d be comfortable if they were meeting in Alabama… Albania, no.
Why not email the US Mission in Tirana directly and ask them about travel safety and human trafficking concerns? Ask them if they would consider this situation to be on the up-and-up or if it is a typical travel scam.
Email: ACSTirana@state.gov