When there's no more room in Hell, the immigration scare story will walk the earth

With zombies, it's the sheer number that's scary
I've said said it before, no matter how many of these buggers you shoot in the head, they just keep on coming. I've just dispatched one stumbling, empty eyed corpse only to turn around and see another three or four behind me. Gah!

Just three weeks ago, I looked at the Daily Express scare story 'PROOF THAT MIGRANTS TAKE MOST UK JOBS'. The proof was absolute cack, since the split of total jobs in the UK is around 26 million to 4 million in the UK born's favour. That's about six times as many.

Never one to be put off a juicy headline by anything as piffling as the truth, the Express today published 'MILLION NEW JOBS GO TO MIGRANTS AS SLUMP DEEPENS', and the Star has led with the spectacular echo of last year's Express story that had to go from the website for being cobblers, 'IMMIGRANTS HAVE STOLEN ALL OUR JOBS'. That last one made the front page. The Mail, in a Slack special, published 'Fresh calls for cap on migrant workers after figures reveal foreigners have taken most of the 1.3m jobs created since 2001'

Remember - almost 4 million immigrants are in work in the UK, compared to almost 26 million UK born people.

I was going to say that the papers' new figures are based on the same old ones measured from a different point, but they're not. They're based on the same principle though, so the claim is still rubbish.

This time, the figures originate from a MigrationWatch press release, complete with cut and pasted quotes. Well done, hacks. Go home early yesterday, did you?

Despite MW's claim that these are government figures, they're not in the most recent Quarterly LFS Migrant Worker Estimate. MW claims that there are 1.34 million extra jobs compared to 2001, but there are actually between 1.66 and 1.905 million, depending on where you measure from.

The Press Release links to this 'study' carried out by MW, which doesn't offer a source. It's probably an older version of the LFS Migrant Worker Estimate, but we have no way of knowing. This is pretty typical of the shoddy nature of MW's research, being general hodgepodge of figures from various sources (only some named, and none linked to) put together into a report that starts with its conclusions. Remember the one that said the figure for the contribution of Eastern Europeans to the economy was actually the contribution of all immigrants, giving it a total about twelve times too low? That one made headlines too.

The great thing about this one is that it contradicts its own conclusion with the real reason so many jobs have gone to immigrants in recent years:

The British born working age population also fell during this period, so the proportion in work remained unchanged at 75.4%.

So when the report goes on to say:

These employment statistics are not, in themselves, absolute proof that the employment of British born workers has declined as the result of East European immigration but it is hard to find another explanation.

It looks a bit silly. The other explanation is just one paragraph above.

Typically shonky stuff from people who don't deserve half the attention they get. But clearly enough to make tabloid editors publish the same shit they did three weeks ago. And I have to say, deliberate or not, it was a genius decision by the Star to publish the story next to a massive picture of the model whose career was thought to be over after contributing to the bullying of Indian star Shilpa Shetty in Celebrity Big Brother by saying, "I think she should fuck off home."

And they should all fuck off home, presumably
Genius.

***UPDATE***
The Sun's version is 'Immigrants take 1.4m new jobs'. You'll notice that's more than MW actually claim.