LONDON: The number of migrants arriving in Britain by crossing the Channel on boats hit a record in the first half of 2024, but regular immigration by health workers and students fell, official data showed Thursday.
The UK processed 13,489 so-called small boat migrants in the six months, an 18 percent jump year-on-year and the highest figure ever for that period, according to the interior ministry statistics.
That compared to 11,433 migrants making the perilous journey — across one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes — from January to June in 2023.
The figures are a reminder of the challenge facing the UK’s new Labour government as it tries to reduce the cross-Channel arrivals amid public unease over the issue.
The data came in the wake of more than a week of disorder — dubbed anti-immigration riots — across England and in Northern Ireland which saw some rampaging mobs chant “stop the boats.”
The phrase was an unfulfilled pledge from Conservative former premier Rishi Sunak, who lost last month’s general election to Labour’s Keir Starmer.
The disturbances, which hit more than a dozen English towns and cities, followed a deadly knife attack on a group of children, an attack wrongly blamed on a Muslim asylum seeker.
However, the number of arrivals of health sector and other workers as well as students and their dependents dropped in the most recent quarter, and year to June.
It coincided with tighter visa regulations announced by Sunak’s government last December and imposed in April aimed at lowering record immigration levels.
Visas issued for health and care workers, a sector suffering from staffing shortfalls, fell by four-fifths from April to June compared to the same period in 2023.
Student visas granted reduced 13 percent in the year to June, and those issued to students’ dependants dropped 81 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2024.
Various industry and higher education lobby groups have voiced concerns at the new restrictions, which prevented some dependents from coming to the UK and hiked minimum salary requirements for some workers.
On Channel crossings, the latest figures showed 81 percent of arrivals by people without legal permission to enter the UK in the year to June were on small boats from mainland Europe.
UK officials began counting these “irregular” arrivals in 2018, when there were just 11 in the first half of the year.
Since then, more than 133,000 have arrived — 70 percent of them men and around a fifth under-18s, according to the data.
Afghans comprised 18 percent of the arrivals in the year to June — the single largest nationality cohort — followed by Iranians (13 percent), Vietnamese (10 percent), Turkish (10 percent) and Syrians (nine percent).
The new statistics revealed the average numbers in each boat had increased again, from 10 in the year ending June 2019, 44 in the year ending June 2023 to 51 people in the latest corresponding period.
UK authorities have repeatedly warned that smuggling gangs organizing the crossings are adapting their methods, using bigger boats and packing more people in.
Starmer has vowed to “smash the gangs” as the centerpiece of his strategy to tackle the issue, after scrapping contentious Conservative plans to deport thousands of migrants to Rwanda.
UK sees record Channel migrant arrivals in 2024 as regular immigration falls
https://arab.news/9u8vu
UK sees record Channel migrant arrivals in 2024 as regular immigration falls
- The figures are a reminder of the challenge facing the UK’s new Labour government as it tries to reduce the cross-Channel arrivals amid public unease over the issue
US forces stop oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela as Trump follows up on promise to seize tankers
US forces stop oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela as Trump follows up on promise to seize tankers
- Trump following the first tanker seizure, of a vessel named the Skipper, this month vowed that the US would carry out a blockade of Venezuela
WASHINGTON: US forces on Saturday stopped an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela for the second time in less than two weeks as President Donald Trump continues to ramp up pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
The pre-dawn operation comes days after Trump announced a “blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers coming in and out of the South American country and follows the Dec. 10 seizure by American forces of an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed that the US Coast Guard with help from the Defense Department stopped the oil tanker that was last docked in Venezuela. She also posted on social media an unclassified video of a UShelicopter landing personnel on a vessel called Centuries.
A crude oil tanker flying under the flag of Panama operates under the name and was recently spotted near the Venezuelan coast, according to MarineTraffic, a project that tracks the movement of vessels around the globe using publicly available data. It was not immediately clear if the vessel was under US sanctions.
“The United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil that is used to fund narco terrorism in the region,” Noem wrote on X. “We will find you, and we will stop you.”
The action was a “consented boarding,” with the tanker stopping voluntarily and allowing US forces to board it, according to a US official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Pentagon and White House officials did not immediately respond to a requests for comment.
Venezuela’s government in a statement Saturday characterized the US forces’ actions as “criminal” and vowed to not let them “go unpunished” by pursuing various legal avenues, including by filing complaints with the United Nations Security Council.
“The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela categorically denounces and rejects the theft and hijacking of another private vessel transporting Venezuelan oil, as well as the enforced disappearance of its crew, perpetrated by United States military personnel in international waters,” according to the statement.
Trump following the first tanker seizure, of a vessel named the Skipper, this month vowed that the US would carry out a blockade of Venezuela. It all comes as Trump has ratcheted up his rhetoric toward Maduro and warned that the longtime Venezuelan leader’s days in power are numbered.
And the president this week demanded that Venezuela return assets that it seized from US oil companies years ago, justifying anew his announcement of a “blockade” against oil tankers traveling to or from the South American country that face American sanctions.
Trump cited the lost US investments in Venezuela when asked about his newest tactic in a pressure campaign against Maduro, suggesting the Republican administration’s moves are at least somewhat motivated by disputes over oil investments, along with accusations of drug trafficking. Some sanctioned tankers already are diverting away from Venezuela.
“We’re not going to be letting anybody going through who shouldn’t be going through,” Trump told reporters earlier this week. “You remember they took all of our energy rights. They took all of our oil not that long ago. And we want it back. They took it — they illegally took it.”
US oil companies dominated Venezuela’s petroleum industry until the country’s leaders moved to nationalize the sector, first in the 1970s and again in the 21st century under Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez. Compensation offered by Venezuela was deemed insufficient, and in 2014, an international arbitration panel ordered the country’s socialist government to pay $1.6 billion to ExxonMobil.
The targeting of tankers comes as Trump has ordered the Defense Department to carry out a series of attacks on vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that his administration alleges are smuggling fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the United States and beyond.
At least 104 people have been killed in 28 known strikes since early September.
The strikes have faced scrutiny from US lawmakers and human rights activists, who say the administration has offered scant evidence that its targets are indeed drug smugglers and that the fatal strikes amount to extrajudicial killings.
The Coast Guard, sometimes with help from the Navy, had typically interdicted boats suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea, searched for illicit cargo, and arrested the people aboard for prosecution.
The administration has justified the strikes as necessary, asserting it is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels aimed at halting the flow of narcotics into the United States. Maduro faces federal charges of narcoterrorism in the US
The US in recent months has sent a fleet of warships to the region, the largest buildup of forces in generations, and Trump has stated repeatedly that land attacks are coming soon.
Maduro has insisted the real purpose of the US military operations is to force him from power.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said in an interview with Vanity Fair published this week that Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle.”
