Tag Archives: illegal

Hundreds of people have shared Facebook posts falsely claiming to show two Australian Navy ships ramming “a boat loaded with illegal immigrants that did not respond to requests to stop”. 

The posts, which have also been shared on X (formerly known as Twitter), add: “The illegal immigrants were all returned, the crew members arrested and the boat scrapped.”

They also say “that’s the way you do it!”—implying that similar tactics should be used in the UK.

But this picture doesn’t show ships from the Australian Navy or a boat carrying migrants. As we have written before, when the same false claim went viral in 2020, the picture was taken in 2012 and actually shows a flare-up in tensions between China and Japan over a small group of islands in the East…

An image shared on Facebook makes an inaccurate comparison between the financial support which pensioners and “illegal immigrants” receive.

It claims that “after paying National Insurance for 35 years, UK pensioners receive £6,800 a year” while “illegal immigrants will receive on average £26,000 a year in unearned benefits”.

These figures aren’t right. The amount UK pensioners receive in state pension varies depending on a number of factors, but pensioners entitled to the full amount receive significantly more than £6,800 per year.

People in the UK without a legal right to be here are not entitled to claim any benefits. Asylum seekers, including those who arrive in the UK on small boats, also can’t claim welfare benefits, but do receive some…

Covid: WHO accuses China, hid data on raccoon infection

The World Health Organization has criticized China for withholding research that may link the origin of Covid to wild animals. WHO also asked Beijing why the data was not made available three years ago, and why it is currently lost. The New York Times reports it. Before the Chinese data disappeared, an international team of virological experts had begun analyzing the research, which revealed the possibility that the virus could have been transmitted by specimens of raccoon dogs, a type of Asian fox widespread in the air. of the first contagion, and infected humans at the Wuhan fish market. But the gene sequence has been removed from the database. “These data – commented Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director general –…

Thousands of people have shared claims on Facebook that “British old age pensioners” get far less annually in benefits than “illegal immigrants/refugees living in Britain”. 

The posts explicitly encourage social media users to share them, claiming that pensioners in Great Britain get a total annual benefit of £6,000 a year, while illegal immigrants and refugees get £29,900. 

We wrote about the same claim more than a decade ago, as well as very similar claims using the same headline figures of £6,000 and £29,000 on social media in 2018 and 2019, and found them to be false. The claims made in the post remain untrue—the totals given are inaccurate and some of the “financial assistance” doesn’t even exist in the UK. 

Claims juxtaposing the amount of…