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Does that mean all immigrants are salt-of-the-earth types? Hardly. There will be some whose presence on these shores we could do without. But tabloid hysteria about an immigrant-fuelled crime-wave or benefit-scrounging is simply that: hysteria. Keeping matters in perspective and retaining a sense of proportion is no fun for the press but tableoid excesses – and lurid individual cases – ought not to blind us to the reality that the vast majority of immigrants to this country are here to work, not to exploit “the system.”