Metis Hon:        Please accept my apologies if I came across as rude and abrupt in my condemnation of the video. Promise you it isn't personal and I have always enjoy reading your news on Facebook!

For 10 years in the 90's, I organized and taught English language classes for ethnic minorities in the Wirral so I have first hand experiences of the hardship and destitute faced by both legal and illegal immigrants from all over the world. From time to time, I even have to work as their advocates when they deal with education authorities, job centres and welfare offices. I promise you it is never easy as hinted in the video to claim unemployment benefits and housing allowances in the UK, you have to attend numerous appointments and grilled by tens of welfare officials before you are granted financial assistance. Hands on my heart, I can assure you 99% of the Muslim I encountered are decent people, they aren't scroungers of our benefit systems. Of course, there are also some bad apples but it is unfair to condemn all Muslims when a few have broken the law. 

I was a member of our college's Equal Opportunities, Discriminations and Diversity Policy Board, I know for a fact that through sensational press and extremist propaganda the British public are fed many misinformation on issues such as benefit fraud and immigration. In many cases, these misconceptions are based on conjecture, anecdote or sadly prejudice and the scale of the collective error is startling as revealed in last year's survey by Ipsos MORI for the Royal Statistical Society.

On immigration, the British public think that our country is swamped by Muslims, we think 24% of the population are Muslims - when the real figure is around 5% in England and Wales and less than 1% in Scotland. We believe 31% are immigrants when the official figure is 13%! On ethnicity, we think that Black and Asian people make up 30% of the population when in fact the figure is closer to 11%. On the issue of benefit fraud, the public think that £24 of every £100 of benefits is fraudulently claimed. Official estimates are that only 70 pence in every £100 is fraudulent - 0.7%!

Our misconceptions reflect media treatment of issues and political propaganda and the focus is often on sensational anecdotes and less on hard figures. It is important that we need to foster statistical literacy and people's confidence to challenge a story, through education that starts in school.

Pedro and Stella are right, we have to be more vigilant against propaganda and political broadcast on the media and internet and we should pass on our wisdom to the younger generation.

P.S    Pedro (Peter Wu), which stupid chart are you reading? The Sun's?

Peter :              I couldn’t agree more with your insightful comments. The kind of things you observe over in the UK also happen here too. Immigrants often become a convenient punching bag for people with an axe to grind. Immigrant bashing during election time (as it is now in Kiwiland) is a true and tried formula which will score political points and win votes. It’s a favourite hobby amongst the fringe parties, the unhinged and the extremists.

By virtue of their appearance, demeanour, dress code, behaviour and culture, immigrants are invariably noticed and the result of whatever they do are unfortunately magnified.

When crimes, fraud, misdemeanours are committed by immigrants,  they get singled out because it is of far greater public interest than those committed by the locals, which might not get a mention at all. Public interest is what sells newspaper and promotes media ratings. The magnification causes distortions, misconceptions, misunderstanding and reinforces prejudice among the red-necks. Worse, it promotes hatred.

As far as this is concerned, I think recent immigrants of China in HK may have cop an unfair share of the criticisms - whatever they may be.

I don’t know much about UK’s affairs other than some ‘sensationalised’ stories and juicy photos in the Daily Mail. I hardly read the ‘stupid’ Sun because my browser cannot cope with download.

Yes, I am certainly aware of the widespread sexual abuse of a large number of underage girls by a gang of men of Pakistani origin. In fact, there were similar incidents involving Pakis not too long ago, but the number of underage girls involved was much less.

Unfortunately, public opinions are often formed by the first story, and a subsequent rebuttal and substantiation more often than not fail to dislodge the opinion already formed.

Immigration is something Kiwiland is learning to deal and coming to grips with. In the past several years, I’ve never seen more people of Middle East, Eastern Europe, African and Indian (particularly the Sikh) origins flooding into the country, not to mention the Chinese.

This is what makes the country interesting, colourful and helps break down racial barriers. Whether we like it or not, we must all get used to the idea of this world becoming a global village and a melting pot of diverse ethnicities.

Mind you, virtually all our parents or grand-parents were immigrants too (from China into HK). And a fair number of us are also immigrants to several countries.

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