In Essen in Germany, a cost-benefit assessment reached similar conclusions. We grudgingly pay out aid money (much of which goes into the pockets of corrupt ministers and generals) instead of allowing Third World workers to come here, work, and send or take back the money they have earned with dignity.Most migrants don’t wish to die in foreign places even if they manage to acquire that semi in Harrow or a car they could only have dreamed of in Ethiopia or Malawi. I believe that, had we not had a series of lock-out immigration policies since 1968, many settled immigrants would have chosen to go back – as long as they had a safety net: the chance to return here for economic reasons. After the mammoth gains made by Britain through colonialism, they had that right. Hence the paradox: the immigration laws themselves have created a larger immigrant population. Ask the first generation of Pakistanis, Caribbeans, Bangladeshis and they will confirm this. Many immigrants would, of course, have settled for life, made new lives and helped in the eternal renewal that this country goes through.

But we are forever treated as a problem.Now we have to tolerate a new right-wing organisation, Migrationwatch UK, which is suddenly being treated with undue respect. This wants no more immigrants and warns that blacks and Asian Britons are having too many babies. Yes, I have bred a litter of future scroungers myself.New Labour panders to such rubbish and carries on with the tradition of botched immigration laws, failing to understand the needs of modern Britain. The economist Nigel Harris believes that migration controls disable economies in the developed world, where serious labour shortages hold back growth, and in the poorer economies, where high unemployment pulls down incentives to succeed. We should allow a flow through, rather than build useless fortresses.Business leaders across Europe understand this. Top British executives tell me they want all migrants and asylum-seekers to have a National Insurance number so they can be employed They already are, but illicitly. Wander around London at dawn and you see them at all-night petrol stations and cleaning offices.

The exploitation is awful but the workers tell me they cannot afford outrage. This gives them a way through an otherwise hopeless life.”A” came to the door last year, bedraggled, a little scary He was a farmer from Romania Could he cut grass for £7 an hour? Fine A year on, our garden is unbelievably beautiful He is now legal, so has to charge £9 to pay taxes. Six other neighbours employ him: “After three years, I will have a house in Romania,” A says optimistically. He will too.None of this is easy for indigenous Britons and settled immigrants, who feel under threat every time a new wave comes in.