Tag Archives: immigrants

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…

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…