I am an immigrant. I emigrated from the United States to the United Kingdom on the 12th of December 1971.

I had studied for a year in Britain 18 months before and fell in love with the country and one of its citizens and moved back despite the dreary weather and traffic jams.

I did not flee a Middle Eastern War. I did not turf up at Heathrow claiming political persecution. I did not risk my life to cross the English Channel in freezing weather. Nor was I fleeing from poverty or conflict. In fact, if I had stayed in America I would probably be enjoying a comfortable country club existence.

Nevertheless, I feel an affinity with African, Asian, Hispanic, or any person from any race or country who left their homeland to seek a new life. It is not easy to leave the safety net of cultural familiarity, family and friends.

If you are born to a country your acceptance is automatic. As an immigrant you have to constantly prove your worth and justify your decision to uproot your entire life and start afresh. At the end of the day, you, more than a native-born person must feel that you have contributed something.

I feel I have succeeded. I started an international news agency which launched the careers of well over a hundred journalists. My children are all a credit to me as are the 200 boys—many of them now young men– who have passed through my scout group over the past 25 years.

I am not boasting. In fact, I don’t regard myself as particularly unusual. Immigrants in every country have outstanding records of contributing to their adopted homelands.

Think about it. By their very nature immigrants have proven through their actions that they are risk takers. They are adventurers. They are focused, determined and prepared to work hard to achieve their aims. Such people are assets to any community lucky enough to have them.

Many people worry that immigration places undue pressure on housing, health and public services. But these concerns are only part of the story. Immigrants also businesses, pay taxes, create jobs and help support an ageing society. According to a recent study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) immigrants to the UK are twice as likely to set up their own businesses then native-born Britons. In the US, immigrants last year accounted for 25 percent of all start-ups even though they make up only 14 percent of the population.

You need only look at the careers of immigrant entrepreneurs such as South African Elon Musk (Tesla), Anglo-Greek Ariana Huffington (Huffington Post) and Russian Sergei Brin (Google). Between them they have created hundreds of thousands of jobs and delighted their American investors who have used their dividends to build expensive homes in gated communities overlooking manicured golf courses.

Back to Britain, where the Migration Advisory Committee reported last year that immigrants on a skilled worker visa generated a net surplus for the exchequer of about $20,000 per immigrant. This compares to $1,000 for the average UK-born Briton. Unskilled workers also made a net contribution, but this is largely because they are mainly young men at the physical peak of their working lives.

Opposition to immigration is not just based on cash (which is clearly a canard). There is also a strong argument that immigrants undermine native values. It is true that people bring customs across borders. My family, for instance, make a point of celebrating the traditional American holiday of Thanksgiving. Every year we invite our British friends and thank them for making us welcome. Some have adopted the custom. I make no apology.

Successive waves of immigrants have all been vilified as cultural contaminants. In the US, the Irish and Poles were attacked as heathen Catholics. Italian immigrants were accused of stealing jobs. The Chinese and Japanese were lumped together as “The Yellow Peril.” In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries French Huguenots swelled the population of Britain by a staggering ten percent. Their craft skills are credited with laying the foundations of Britain’s industrial revolution.

Britain has changed since 1971. Immigration is a big part of the change. Brexit was, in large part, a revolt against immigration—or at least the belief that immigration waw out of control. The arrival of small boats crossing the Channel has reinforced that perception. Governments have every right—a duty—to control their border. But controlling immigration is not the same as condemning immigrants.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”