UK Poverty Post

Migration is Good for Britain – What the Papers Don’t Say

One of the perks of my job is that I have to read all the newspapers every morning and summarise the news priorities and what’s going on for my colleagues.

And one of the things I have noticed is that, when it comes to migration, the newspapers can be so selective as to be positively misleading. There was an example of this yesterday. Both the Sun and the Daily Mail featured a poll showing that 81 per cent of the British public want a cap on migration. What neither publication mentioned was that the poll was in fact conducted by the anti-migration think thank Migration Watch – hardly a disinterested source!

And neither publication picked up another independent piece of research by University College London, which showed that not only do migrants from the EU pay their way, but also they are more likely to be in employment than their British counterparts and less likely to be claiming benefits. In short, here’s the proof of what anyone who works with migrants knows: migrants put far more into our national pot than they take out.

Other than the Financial Times no other national newspaper had picked up this story. We should expect better from our national press – after all, how many of the unfavourable public attitudes to migrants are rooted in failure of our press to give a clear picture of the contribution migrants make to society?