http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1210129/One-killers-immigrant.html?ITO=1490

Should one have the patience to read the content of the article and not just scan the titles as most people do, the contents say (Up to a fifth of killers in England and Wales are foreign, police figures suggest. Out of 371 individuals accused or convicted of murder or manslaughter last year, 79 were from abroad - more than 21 per cent).
Being foreign does not necessarily mean the accused is an immigrant; some people might be in UK for other purposes like trade, business, or even tourism. Even gangsters travel from country to another, and ’ being accused or convicted’ is totally different from being convicted.
From my experience a great heap of articles were recycled based on wrong misinforming article.

The article says ‘Foreign immigrants make up only around a tenth of the UK population, meaning they are statistically twice as likely as native Britons to be charged with or found guilty of an illegal killing’. I do not know how the respectable colleagues came up with this conclusion since they have build their article on wrong assumptions in the first place, and the likelihood that the immigrants being accused does not necessarily mean they were guilty, this can be easily checked out from statistics and ample of articles that found many people innocent after being imprisoned for a number of years, thanks to introducing new technologies of DNA testing.

The article goes ‘In London, almost 40 per cent of those in such cases in the past year were from overseas, or of unknown origin’. Again there is a difference between being from overseas or of unknown origin and being an immigrant.

The article claims ‘The highest figures were in London where in the year to April 2009, 93 of the 233 people accused or convicted of murder and manslaughter were either non-British or from unknown backgrounds’. Does becoming British national change such figures or immune people against crime? The article is clearly charging the readers against immigrants, and portraying them as a cause of alarm. Should the respected colleagues cared to find out the percentage of criminals after being offered British citizenship they would have done many some justice.

The article says that ‘In West Mercia, five out of 22 were foreigners - 23 per cent - from Lithuania, Poland, and the Republic of Ireland’. Again building on the assumption that these people were found guilty which is not concluded. Besides the fact that I never knew that people from the Republic of Ireland are considered immigrants or foreigners.

The article proposes that ‘But some forces - including Cheshire, Humberside, Hampshire, and Merseyside - recorded no cases with foreign killers. The figures may be an underestimate as 11 out 30 forces which responded claimed they did not record nationalities of either killers or murder victims, and others had gaps in the information’…so …when the percentage of crime is low this can be explained by one of three possibilities, either the figures are an underestimate, or that the authorities did not record the nationality of the murderers, or there are gaps of information. There is no benefit of the doubt or the remote possibility that there are no crimes committed by the misfortunate immigrants.

The article says ‘As foreign suspects are typically harder to identify and trace, meaning that crimes are less likely to be solved, the real proportion could be significantly higher’. I can’t see why foreign suspects are typically harder to find since every soul enters UK, their fingerprints are taken, and with all the millions invested in surveillance cameras every where, added to that the very tight regulations the people go through for opening a bank account, buying a mobile, finding a room to rent, even acquiring an ID for a saver bus ticket. I see that my colleagues do not know enough about the hell the immigrants go through. If the crimes are less likely to be solved that does not mean it was committed by an immigrant, there are many other possibilities to consider, besides insinuating that ‘the real proportion could be significantly higher’ is a deliberate act of pouring more oil on an already victim set on fire.

Since the article claims ‘The figures showed foreigners were also more likely to be victims of murder or manslaughter’, I can’t see why the respected colleagues did not choose this information to be the title heading the article.

The respected colleagues brought two examples of convicted immigrant criminals but failed to mention even one of the so many examples where immigrants have been victims or being charged and then found innocent.

I am concerned that this example of journalism is one of many articles that is causing hostility in the communities towards immigrants in general. I do not see this article as fair or comprehensive. I see journalism as an ethical tool, a platform for those who have no voice or can’t vote to set the records straight or vent their concerns. Many immigrants are hard working people doing their best to live a normal descent life, striving hard to integrate with their local communities, but articles like the above mentioned is forcing them to cocoon themselves and shy away from participation, forcing them to become prisoners in an open space. Such articles make immigrants more vulnerable, besides feeding some nationals especially misinformed youth wrong information that makes them feel victims of outsiders in their own country. Immigration is not a crime or a plague. It is a healthy normal human activity that has been going on for centuries. How would British citizens working in Spain, Australia, the Middle East or New Zealand feel if they were to be welcomed by local journalists with a similar article?