Record number of migrants cross English Channel so far this year
A record number of migrants have crossed the English Channel so far this year, according to provisional Home Office figures.
Some 4,644 have made the journey in 2024 – a record for the first three months of a calendar year.
Of the total, 338 people arrived in the UK in seven boats on Tuesday.
Politics latest: New figures spell trouble for one of Rishi Sunak’s pledges
The latest data exceeds the previous record high figure of 4,548 for January to March 2022 and had already surpassed the 3,793 arrivals in the first few months of last year.
It comes after Rishi Sunak continued to insist his plan to “stop the boats” was working despite crossings in 2024 tracking ahead of recent years.
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, on 26 March. Pic: PA
Last week, Downing Street declared that the government was dealing with a “migration emergency” after a record day for crossings.
Some 514 people made the journey in 10 boats on 20 March, making this the busiest day since the start of the year.
The “stop the boats” pledge was one of the prime minister’s five priorities that he set out at the start of 2023, in which he said he would “pass new laws to stop small boats, making sure that if you come to this country illegally, you are detained and swiftly removed”.
In keeping with this, last year a total of 29,437 migrants arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel, down 36% on a record 45,774 arrivals in 2022.
But figures from this year show that so far, crossings are 23% higher than the same time in 2023, and 12% higher than the same time in 2022, according to analysis of government data by the PA news agency.
Read more:
Home Office launches social media ads in Vietnam to deter small boat migrants
Video appears to show French police using aggressive tactics
The government’s Rwanda Bill also remains stuck in parliamentary limbo after a series of further defeats in the Lords, with MPs not scheduled to debate it again until after Westminster returns from its Easter break.
‘Time to get a grip’
Reacting to the figures on Wednesday, Labour said it was “time to get a grip and restore order to the border”.
Stephen Kinnock, shadow immigration minister, said: “Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Rishi Sunak keeps on telling the British people that small boat arrivals are coming down and his promise to stop the boats remains on track.
“Can he not see what is happening from inside his No 10 bunker, or does he think we can’t see it for ourselves?
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‘Aggressive tactics’ used on boats
“Either way, it’s time to get a grip and restore order to the border.”
He said a Labour government would strengthen border security, crush smuggling gangs, clear the asylum backlog, end hotel use and set up a new returns and enforcement unit.
In its latest statement on small boat crossings, the Home Office said: “The unacceptable number of people who continue to cross the Channel demonstrates exactly why we must get flights to Rwanda off the ground as soon as possible.
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“We continue to work closely with French police who are facing increasing violence and disruption on their beaches as they work tirelessly to prevent these dangerous, illegal and unnecessary journeys.
“We remain committed to building on the successes that saw arrivals drop by more than a third last year, including tougher legislation and agreements with international partners, in order to save lives and stop the boats.”
Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange founded by billionaire twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, has rolled out prediction markets in the United States after securing key regulatory approval.
Gemini launched its in-house prediction market, Gemini Predictions, across all 50 US states, the exchange announced in an X post on Monday.
Provided via affiliate Gemini Titan, Gemini Predictions enables users to trade on the outcomes of real-world events with “near instant execution” and full transparency.
The launch came shortly after Gemini Titan obtained a designated contract market license from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Wednesday, authorizing the company to offer prediction markets in the US.
Rising trend for building “everything apps”
The arrival of Gemini Predictions marks the company’s latest step in building a “one-stop super app,” allowing users to not only trade crypto, but also stake assets, earn rewards, buy tokenized stocks and participate in prediction markets.
The move aligns with a broader industry trend toward all-in-one platforms in crypto, with rival exchanges like Coinbase also rushing to introduce a wide range of services, including trending prediction markets and tokenized stocks.
The trend has also been picked up by self-custodial wallets like MetaMask and Trust Wallet, as well as major decentralized exchanges (DEX) like PancakeSwap, which released a new BNB Chain-based prediction platform Probable on Tuesday.
Related: Phantom taps Kalshi to offer regulated prediction markets in wallet
The project adds to a growing portfolio of prediction markets backed by YZi Labs, the venture capital firm founded by Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, including Opinion, which topped volume rankings in November.
Major providers had faced issues in the US
The industry’s push to launch prediction markets follows years of regulatory uncertainty in the United States, with major providers such as Polymarket resuming local operations after previously facing a ban in 2022.
The platform started rolling out its relaunch in the US in early December, announcing that waitlisted users would be the first to access its US app.
In another sign of a warming US stance toward prediction markets, a group of providers, including Kalshi, Robinhood and Crypto.com, recently received a temporary reprieve after a judge intervened following cease and desist orders issued by the state of Connecticut in early December.
Crypto industry executives have urged the US Securities and Exchange Commission to shift its thinking on blockchain privacy tools, pitching that there are legitimate applications for them outside of criminal use.
The SEC hosted crypto and finance executives for a discussion and panel on financial surveillance and privacy on Monday, the agency’s sixth crypto-focused roundtable this year, as it seeks to overhaul its approach to crypto.
StarkWare general counsel Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, who participated in a panel discussion, told Cointelegraph after the event that a major takeaway was that there shouldn’t be an assumption that those using and creating privacy tools are “overwhelmed by wrongdoers.”
“Why is the assumption that an individual needs to affirmatively prove that they are compliant or they’re using the tool for good?”
“As opposed to it being the other way around, where the assumption is that this individual is using the tool for good until there is some sort of indication that they’re using it for bad,” she said.
Kirkpatrick Bos added that “of course, wrongdoers were using, or are using those tools, but there needs to be a balance.”
During the roundtable, Wayne Chang, the founder and CEO of the credential management company SpruceID, said some percentage of users of stablecoins, a crypto tool that is slowly becoming mainstream, will want privacy.
“There are a ton of stablecoins that aren’t onchain yet that would come onchain if there is privacy,” he said. “We’re going to see an increase in demand for privacy-preserving blockchains.”
“My hope is that regulators continue to engage industry, and we can have those discussions on how to keep privacy for folks while also having tools that are useful,” Chang said.
Customer checks are becoming outdated
Kirkpatrick Bos said a discussion on Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) measures focused on whether current rules are sufficient in the age of artificial intelligence.
“The question arose and was debated on the panel, well, what is necessary for Anti-Money Laundering?” she said. “Now we have AI. It’s made manual, AML and KYC antiquated. How do we solve for that?”
“There was a sense that the current system of AML and KYC is antiquated, it’s problematic, it’s ineffective,” she added. “But there needs to be some sort of check when it’s a centralized entity facilitating flows of money to ensure that they’re not helping wrongdoers.”
Many financial institutions request a picture of a user’s driver’s license for its KYC checks, which Kirkpatrick Bos said was “absurd, because an individual can go on the internet and develop a fake driver’s license in a matter of seconds.”
“So the question is, can cryptography-based tools improve that and make it harder for bad guys to do that? But can they also do that and make it harder for bad guys while preserving an individual’s privacy and not revealing data like an address, where it is not necessary to vet the legality of the funds?” she added.
Some projects have begun to test crypto-based solutions for proving identity while claiming to preserve privacy, such as Sam Altman’s World, which gives users a cryptographic key they can use to prove they’re human.
SEC’s Atkins warns of potential for crypto mass surveillance
SEC chair Paul Atkins had given opening remarks at the roundtable, warning that if “pushed in the wrong direction, crypto could become the most powerful financial surveillance architecture ever invented.”
“If the instinct of the government is to treat every wallet like a broker, every piece of software as an exchange, every transaction as a reportable event, and every protocol as a convenient surveillance node, then the government will transform this ecosystem into a financial panopticon,” he added.
Related: SEC ’eased up on’ 60% of crypto enforcement cases under Trump: Report
Atkins said that crypto allows for “privacy-preserving tools that the analog world could not provide,” which some institutions depend on to build positions or test strategies without “instantly telegraphing that activity to competitors.”
He added that some of the technology could balance the government’s interest in deterring security threats and the public’s privacy.
“But to best strike this balance, we must make certain that Americans can use these tools without immediately falling under suspicion.”
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