newspaper report 75% of immigrants claim benefits within 6 months of receiving their national insurance number?

75% of immigrants. What type of immigrants. This is the Daily Mail reporting "selectively" again no doubt.

One or two of the answers here show just the sort of ignorance of the immigration system and racism that the Daily Mail and its ilk love to feed on.

Non EU immigrants CANNOT claim benefits until they have been granted Indefinite Leave to Remain. A non EU immigrant must have been legally resident in the UK for five years before they can claim ILR or for two years if they married a UK national.

Benefits are classed as follows:

income-based jobseeker's allowance;

income support;

child tax credit;

working tax credit;

a social fund payment;

child benefit;

housing benefit;

council tax benefit;

state pension credit;

attendance allowance;

severe disablement allowance;

carer's allowance;

disability living allowance;

an allocation of local authority housing; and

local authority homelessness assistance.

They can however claim the following as to be eligible you must have paid NI contributions. These are not classed as "public funds".

contribution-based jobseeker's allowance;

incapacity benefit;

retirement pension;

widow's benefit and bereavement benefit;

guardian's allowance;

statutory maternity pay; and

maternity allowance.

EU immigrants are allowed to claim certain reciprocal benefits if they would be entitled to them in their own country. This applies to Brits living abroad for example the 500,000 UK nationals currently living in Spain are also entitled to claim benefits through the Spanish system.

Asylum seekers are treated differently and are far fewer in number than rags like the Mail and the Sun would lead you to believe. For instance between July and September 2009, of the 7,240 asylum decisions made, 79% were refused, 9% were granted Humanitarian Protection or Discretionary Leave (temporary permission to stay) and only 12% were granted asylum. The majority of cases are decided within 30 days.

Until asylum is granted, they cannot work so can apply for financial support if they are destitute. The level of support is currently as follows:

Married couple (or in a civil partnership): £69.57

Lone parent aged 18 or over: £42.16

Single person aged 18 or over: £35.13

Single person over 16, but under 18 £38.18

Person aged under 16: £50.81

Pregnant women and women with children aged under three get additional help.

They can also be housed, the Home Office uses private landlords and never in London or the South East, so they are not taking accommodation from UK citizens.

Non EU immigrants cannot bring in "shiploads of dependents". Unlike many countries for example the USA, the UK only allows direct relations to join their family in the UK. i.e. minor children, spouses, or elderly parents who are totally financially reliant on their child and have no other children in their home country to care for them . They must be able to prove that they can support them financially and provide adequate accommodation.

Between July and September 2009, 14% of immigrants were returning Brits, 85,000 of them. Nearly 16 times the number of asylum seekers making claims during the same period.

So talking all this into account, of the 610,245 immigrants to the UK during the July to September 2009 period, 371,000 were students who can apply for a NI number and work part time legally, but cannot claim benefits.

That leaves 239,245 potential benefits claimants. Already we've disproved the Daily Mail's "facts".

Of these 239,245, 112,000 were work permit holders and their dependents, all of who can work, apply for a NI No but who again cannot claim benefits.

That leaves 127,245. Of these 85,000 were UK residents, some of whom may or may not be perfectly entitled to claim benefits. Others due to the length of time spent outside the UK, will not be entitled to claim certain benefits. That leaves us with 42,245.

29,085 of these were from eastern European countries that require worker registration. As stated above, some of these are entitled under reciprocal EU arrangements to certain benefits.

Of the remaining 13,160, 5,055 were asylum seekers. The remainder would be Youth Mobility, Ancestry visa entrants and such, none of whom can claim benefits.

Hope that clears up some of the misinformation.

EDIT News of the Screws? Surprise, surprise. Didn't know their journos could spell immigration. All of our UK vicars must be behaving themselves this week then.

EDIT BTW I am not defending immigration. I'm putting some perspective (and facts) to scare mongering misinformation which is deliberately designed to create a rift between the indigenous population and immigrants.

Of course a number of immigrants claim benefits and scrounge off the system, but not the numbers claimed by the NOTW, because it's just not possible.

What IS possible is to misinform and feed off the prejudices of those who take the media FANTASY at face value without checking FACTS. Immmigration policy and legislation is complicated BUT it is not rocket science and the facts are readily available to anyone who wants to check.

Oh and you cannot get a NI No if you are not legally in the UK.

If that figure is true then it is only because the other 25% don't know they are eligible to make a claim.

We are loading up the benefits system with parasites both home grown and imported!

One important question that needs answered is why does ANY immigrant need to claim benefit?

It should be a condition of entry that a person has funds to support them self for 3 years before being considered eligible for claiming any benefit. That would include being able to claim child benefit, which is another can work won't work benefit scam.

That newspaper is about 30+yrs behind the times - this has been going on for that amount of time at least.

Nothing new there at all. Instead of wasting all that time and money on 'research' all they had too do was 'ask me' I could have put them straight on this issue for nothing.!!

These immigrants will 'bankrupt the benefit system' with all there huge 'family claims' and no intention of working. ..........and It won't be long now.!!

A few answers already given here are proof that some people live in a 'fantasy' land - claiming 'rules' stop these people claiming - none of these immigrants are allowed too 'starve too death' in the UK - there 'new human Rights' would not allow it - they are simply put into the 'emergency' payout system (which is the same thing) - and these immigrants and scammers are far too clever to let 'rules and quotas' get in the way of there claims.

It seems to me that whenever one of these comments is made, we get 2 types of answer, those that agree whole heartedly with anything that looks bad on immigrants.

Then there are those that will use the same tired old lines to say that immigrants simply cannot do this for various reasons.

Th problem is that everyone is looking for extremes and discounting anything else. Bottom line is that many immigrants are on benefits from a very early stage, they also know that the more kids they have, the more they will get. For many of them the benefits they get are beyond the dreams of avarice where they come from, the message goes back to the home country and guess what, we get more and more who understand just exactly what they have to do in order to get in, get work, get laid off and get benefits. Simples

NB:- This is not exclusive to immigrants, for many years we have seen the effect of british children getting knocked up and being provided with rent free housing, and other benefits which increase with the number of children they spawn, many immigrants are simply following that example.

I doubt that once the Police open the package and see that it is nothing more than a sandwich, that it is thrown away. I believe that the rule of thumb is to keep durable items such as TVs;clothing; jewelry; computers; watches etc. for 6 months. Usually, stuff that is over 6 months is auctioned off by the Police Dept..

no suprises there, nobody with half a brain would think of coming to britain knowing the state its in with the depression. that means immigrants are only coming over for the benefits and social housing. work for an agency for 6 months then sign on get social housing and free money means more money to send home. not forgetting the scams as well like hiring out their council houses and flats to other squads of immigrants. of course im not saying all immigrants are scamming but nobody with half an ounce of sense would migrate to a country in a worse state then their own home country, that makes me suspicious.

MOST immigrants are not eligible for benefits unless they have a valid visa which permits them like a spouse visa who has children etc. All the rest have to work and get a job then after getting the infidinte leave they can apply for benefits for their children but if it is a british father or mother or they bring children wit them then they can instantly access benefits.

All immigrants should have to prove visible means of support and be able to pay their own way for everything before being able to claim any benefits. By this I mean pay for their own accommodation,food ,medical treatment and education. They should also be required to work for 5 years before becoming entitled to the welfare system.

As for asylum seekers they all should be repatriated when their own country is deemed safe. I still hold the belief that the majority in this category have come here purely to exploit our welfare system.Many have come to avoid prison in their own countries because they are thugs and thieves. You only have to look at French ports where most are wielding knives and other weapons.

If you are far more interested in finding out to speak Spanish than study or write it (they do educate reading and writing but speaking is far far more heavily emphasized)

All guesses about the newspaper are wrong so far, it's from the News of the World which is even more suspect. They say it's based on 'figures released by the DWP' but they don't give the source, so it's pointless to comment.

And insanity Brown is borrowing hundreds of billions to pay for it. Parliament should be cleared out and converted into a public toilet....What a vermin filled RAT hole it has become.