LONDON: At least 28,300 people packed into small boats crossed the Channel from France to England’s south coast in 2021, an annual record that was three times the number of crossings a year earlier.
The leap in numbers, reported Tuesday by the Press Association news agency based on data from Britain’s Home Office, reflects the soaring number of migrants seeking to cross the world’s busiest shipping lane often in flimsy boats provided by people smugglers.
The risks were tragically underscored on Nov. 24, when at least 27 migrants drowned as their boat sank after leaving France. The crossings have become a source of tension between France and Britain.
As winter approached last year, November was the busiest month for crossings of the Channel, which is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) wide at its narrowest point, with 6,869 people reaching the UK On Nov. 11 alone, 1,185 people made the risky crossing in 33 boats.
The figures also show that the boats are getting larger, with an average of 28 people on board each vessel that arrived in the UK, up from just over 13 a year earlier.
Activists are calling for the British government to offer more opportunities to asylum-seekers in a bid to decrease the number of Channel crossings.
Tim Naor Hilton, chief executive at Refugee Action, said that the UK government’s policy will lead to more deaths in the Dover Strait.
“People will continue to cross the Channel in flimsy boats, and smugglers will continue to profit, unless ministers open up more routes for refugees to claim asylum here,” Naor Hilton said.
Clare Moseley, founder of charity Care4Calais which supports refugees living in northern France, agreed.
“If the government were serious about stopping people smugglers, it would create a safe way for people to claim asylum and put people smugglers out of business once and for all,” she said.
But Home Office minister Tom Pursglove said that “seeking asylum for protection should not involve people asylum shopping country to country, or risking their lives by lining the pockets of criminal gangs to cross the Channel.”
He said that planned government reforms to immigration law will criminalize entering the UK without permission and introduce life prison terms for people smugglers as well as strengthening powers of the country’s Border Force to stop and redirect boats and clearing the way for asylum-seekers to have their claims processed outside the UK
When the reforms were introduced to Parliament in July, Naor Hilton said they were “built on a deep lack of understanding of the reality of refugee migration.”
Record number of migrant boats crossed Channel in 2021
https://arab.news/bap7h
Record number of migrant boats crossed Channel in 2021
- The risks were tragically underscored on Nov. 24, when at least 27 migrants drowned as their boat sank after leaving France
- The crossings have become a source of tension between France and Britain
Trump calls for one year cap on credit card interest rates at 10 percent
- Trump says Americans have been ‘ripped off’ by credit card companies
- Lawmakers from both parties have raised concerns about rates
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Friday he was calling for a one-year cap on credit card interest rates at 10 percent starting on January 20 but he did not provide details on how his plan will come to fruition or how he planned to make companies comply.
Trump also made the pledge during the campaign for the 2024 election that he won but analysts dismissed it at the time saying that such a step required congressional approval.
Lawmakers from both the Democratic and Republican Parties have raised concerns about high rates and have called for those to be addressed. Republicans currently hold a narrow majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
There have been some legislative efforts in Congress to pursue such a proposal but they are yet to become law and in his post Trump did not offer explicit support to any specific bill.
Opposition lawmakers have criticized Trump, a Republican, for not having delivered on his campaign pledge.
“Effective January 20, 2026, I, as President of the United States, am calling for a one year cap on Credit Card Interest Rates of 10 percent,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, without providing more details.
“Please be informed that we will no longer let the American Public be ‘ripped off’ by Credit Card Companies,” Trump added.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on details of the call from Trump, but said on social media without elaborating that the president was capping the rates.
Some major US banks and credit card issuers like American Express, Capital One Financial Corp, JPMorgan , Citigroup and Bank of America did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
US Senator Bernie Sanders, a fierce Trump critic, and Senator Josh Hawley, who belongs to Trump’s Republican Party, have previously introduced bipartisan legislation aimed at capping credit card interest rates at 10 percent for five years. This bill explicitly directs credit card companies to limit rates as part of broader consumer relief legislation.
Democratic US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna have also introduced a House of Representatives bill to cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent, reflecting cross-aisle interest in addressing high rates.
Billionaire fund manager Bill Ackman, who endorsed Trump in the last elections, said the US president’s call was a “mistake.”
“This is a mistake,” Ackman wrote on X.
“Without being able to charge rates adequate enough to cover losses and earn an adequate return on equity, credit card lenders will cancel cards for millions of consumers who will have to turn to loan sharks for credit at rates higher than and on terms inferior to what they previously paid.”
Last year, the Trump administration moved to scrap a credit card late fee rule from the era of former President Joe Biden.
The Trump administration had asked a federal court to throw out a regulation capping credit card late fees at $8, saying it agreed with business and banking groups that alleged the rule was illegal. A federal judge subsequently threw out the rule.
