Today’s Daily Express front page headline screamed, ‘Fury
over Britain’s 2m illegal migrants’.
Yet, on closer scrutiny, the ‘fury’ should instead be about the Express’s
careless journalism. The ‘exclusive’ statistic,
claimed the Express, came from 'think tank' Migration Watch – yet Migration Watch this
morning denied this, and announced that they, “declined to cooperate in this
story”.
The UK government described the Daily Express number of 'illegal migrants' as a 'guestimate' and fact-checking organisation, FullFact.org today reported that nobody actually knows the true statistic, but previous estimates put the number of illegal migrants in Britain at between 417,000 and 1.1 million. The FullFact headline read, 'Think tank says it didn't estimate Express '2 million illegal migrants' figure
