Immigration often hits the front pages now it has become it has turned into the source of much debate. You would be forgiven for concluding this is all new. Often, arguments marshalled against immigration are ignorant of history.

The UK (my home country) is a case in point. You can eavesdrop a conversation in a pub or supermarket queue of how immigrants are changing the character of the country. The smell of alien cooking is in the air. There are foreign tongues on the street. The music is different. Because it all stands out so much and perhaps alien to a lot of people, it creates a feeling of fear and resentment and a suspicion amongst the ‘indigenous’ people.

But this is to misunderstand what makes a culture. Much of what we think of as unalienably English is actually the very result of immigration.

English as a language, for example, can trace its roots to languages that those who have settled here have brought with them. We have been occupied by the Romans, conquered by the Germanic peoples, pillages and raided by the Vikings, crushed under the heel of the French. All of these invasions created a melding of tongues as our overlords integrated into the existing fabric of society. With almost every utterance, we throw away use Latinate, French and Celtic words with barely a thought. “The language of Shakespeare” is a mongrel creation to say the least!

This is doubly true of our culture. With every coin you throw into a wishing well, you are carrying out the same ritual sacrfice that the Saxons used to make to their gods in sacred rives. If you have ever tooled along the A1 you are following tracks laid down by by the Romans. Our very laws, civic functions and even the layout of cities and villages are the result of often uneasy mixes of tradition that have become as one only with the passing of time.

More recently, our swaggering era of global dominion saw great influxes of migrants as a third of the Earth was coloured pink – causing seekers of new opportunities to flock to our island. From foreign merchants seeking influence at the heart of Britain\’s empire, to those fleeing wars on the borders of Empre Britain was subject to waves of immigration that have yet to cease.

So what we think of ‘new’ and unusual today is something that has been going on for thousands of years. While some people cavil at a glimpse of a Muslim veil or the chatter of European languages in the pub, this a continuation of something that started long before we arrived on the scene. In the end, immigrant populations merely become assimilated into the the nation’s identity in such a way that their story will be our story too. Perhaps in some distant future they will probably be expressing unease at the appalling smell of cooking from Martian immigrants! :)