Yet again Ukip shows its contempt for truth - and the British public
Speaking on last night’s BBC Question Time, when asked how to tell ‘genuine refugees from economic migrants’, Richard Helmer, Ukip MEP for the East Midlands, said it was ‘almost impossible’ – before claiming the opposite:
“At the beginning of this process, everybody said, ‘of course they are refugees, of course they must be let in’, including Angela Merkel who made some very foolish statements.
More recently there have been proper studies done of people coming through, and it is clear that genuine refugees are a small proportion, and perhaps 70 or 75 per cent are actually economic migrants.
Helmer didn’t say which ‘proper studies’ he was citing, but what he said directly contradicts the facts.
The United Nations reports that 62 per cent of those arriving in Europe this year up to July were from Syria, Eritrea and Afghanistan.
Frontex, Europe’s border agency, reported on October 10 that of the 49,000 people arriving in the Greek Islands in September:
“Syrian refugees remained the dominant nationality among the arriving migrants.”
Greece is where the majority of people reach Europe.
Of the 12,000 who arrived in Italy last month, ‘Eritreans were the most numerous‘.
The United Nations Refugee Agency said of those arriving in Europe by sea this year, 83 per cent are from the world’s top ten refugee producing countries.
More than half (54 per cent) were from Syria alone.
Let’s zoom in on Syria for a moment:
When Syrians in Germany, almost all of whom arrived this year, were recently polled:
86 per cent said they feared kidnap and arrest in Syria.
88 per cent said their area of Syria had been shelled, (i.e. bombed)
92 per cent said armed fighting was a threat to their safety.
82 per cent said they had been living under siege and/or without food.
Any of the above would make them refugees and likely to be granted asylum.
Polling for Eritreans and Afghans fleeing their own war-torn countries would yield similar results.
So how can this be squared with the claims of Ukip’s MEP?
What he said is not only belied by all the evidence above – it contradicts the interviews and research carried out by thousands of journalists, aid workers and government officials across the continent and beyond.
Yet there was Ukip’s MEP on the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, telling the nation without citation that ‘genuine refugees are a small proportion, and perhaps 70 or 75 per cent are actually economic migrants’.
Data of this kind is never 100 per cent accurate. But by all the available evidence – and until he names his source – Helmer’s claims look to be 100 per cent wrong.
Once again, Ukip prove they have contempt for truth and demonstrate a willingness to mislead the British public.
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Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
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83 Responses to “Ukip MEP spreads lies about refugees on BBC Question Time”
jimB
You can’t be arsed to argue with ‘flat earthers’ . How about you look at what people like Freeman Dyson, James Lovelock and countless others have to say about the subject are they all flat earthers too. If you approach this through the lens of science and not through misguided idealism you might just find the truth. Keeping it simple CO2 is plant food. Plants die at about 150ppm optimal growth is about 2000ppm currently we are about 400ppm. This is empirical science something which is observable by experiment in a garden green house.
sayajp
The Loony Left would love (at mummy and daddy’s expense) to go all over the world in solar powered ships, gathering up people who didn’t have access to the FREE healthcare and ipads they grew up with and bring them all to Britain to live in perfect little eco villages where they could skip around maypoles…when they weren’t trying to mutilate each other for differing religious viewpoints
Wilky1
They all seem to speak English, not German or French. Once they have EU papers, where exactly do you think they’re going to rock up?
Is this “hardly any of them seem to wan to come to the UK” like the stock statement “I’m from Aleppo” as shown on the BBC Panorama program? Where they were all throwing their papers into the sea or groups of young men travelling with a young boy with a broken jaw ( implication he was kidnapped & had jaw broken to keep him quiet whilst they used him to get over borders)..
Quattrovalvole
Not only that, the problem in our steel industry stems from the fact that as members of the EU we cannot balance our trade. The ‘No’ leaflet from 1975 warned of this very thing!
Quattrovalvole
There is no UKIP lie, he’s quoting EU statistics.