Migration Watch UK - Outputs

Outputs

MigrationWatch's website, which is archived in the UK Web Archive, contains a range of briefing papers to support the organisation's perspective on the statistical, legal economic and historical aspects of migration, and on topics such as the European Union, housing, health and social cohesion, as they relate to immigration. MigrationWatch also conducts research and provides secretarial and administrative support for the Cross-Party Group on Balanced Migration and created, financed and updates the group's website.

Sir Andrew is a regular commentator on immigration and asylum matters in the British media. He is frequently quoted or interviewed and writes numerous articles for the major daily newspapers including right-of-centre newspapers such as the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express and Daily Star. He has also written for The Times and for guardian.co.uk, the website of the liberal-left newspaper The Guardian. A 2005 Demos publication states that Andrew Green was quoted on the topic of asylum at least once a week in the Daily Express and Daily Star, starting from early 2003. Green also featured prominently in the BBC's "asylum day" coverage of the topic in 2003.

Bernhard Gross, Kerry Moore and Terry Threadgold of the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University have criticised the broadcast media's use of MigrationWatch to 'balance' reports on immigration. In a study of broadcast coverage of the issue of asylum, they state:

It is clear from our interviews with broadcast journalists that taking 'too soft a left, liberal' approach to asylum is seen as contradicting everything they believe about the values of objectivity and impartiality. This explains why one television editor told us that "perhaps the Mail and the Express had got it right". This anxiety about taking a position seen to be supportive of asylum seems to produce an over-compensation in terms of using easily accessible right-wing sources such as MigrationWatch UK as a 'balance'. The whole idea of 'balance' in these contexts needs to be re-thought and re-imagined. There are never just two sides to any story and two negative sides do not add up to ‘balance’. Journalists do not seem at present to know where else to go with this issue.

A website launched in February 2011 with the aim of allowing users to identify so-called churnalism revealed the extent to which newspapers such as the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Daily Express and The Times copy and paste from MigrationWatch press releases in articles on migration.

In October 2011, Andrew Green started a petition on the UK government's e-petitions website, calling on the government "to take all necessary steps to get immigration down to a level that will stabilise our population as close to the present level as possible and, certainly, well below 70 million". By April 2012, the petition had attracted more than 139,000 signatures.