I totally agree with Martyn Gibson ("I wonder why foreign students come here" - Letters, May 19) when he condemns the attacks on foreign students in Southwick.

Sadly, these types of attacks are also commonplace in Worthing, Brighton and along the South Coast.

They should come as no surprise, however, when we see the hysteria that has been whipped up by the Press in relation to immigration.

Our daily papers, particularly the so-called quality tabloids, tell us we're about to be "swamped" by "hordes" of "foreigners".

It therefore follows that yobbos, lumping everyone from abroad together as a "foreigner", see them as fair game for intimidation.

They are given the message every day that foreigners are inferior or a threat to the British in some way and are only over here to scrounge and abuse the benefits system. Where there are abuses of the system there should, of course, be stiff penalties but this applies in any walk of life.

The Press, however, conveniently forgets that in many of our public services, staff from all nationalities happily work alongside each other - 38 per cent of nursing staff in English hospitals, for instance, are non-British.

There are also many migrants working in low-paid jobs that keep our service economy afloat.

Alarm bells should be ringing with any fair-minded person that this situation is close to getting seriously out of hand. We must encourage open and sensible debate on the issue of immigration but we can only do that by being given the truth - not opinion dressed up as news.

-Peter Atkinson, Portslade