Joseph Conrad wrote in Lord Jim: "Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life."Across the country, in all our big cities, you find them, intimate little eateries, re-creations of sorts, of that spot on earth they left behind which still clings to their hearts.Colombian cantinaThe cantina looks like it's been painted with raspberry sorbet. Nothing for it: turn a deaf ear."These are the subjects incessantly, fervently, discussed by immigrants and refugees They also have other needs. Are you forever a guest? Do you have to be eternally grateful and polite? Should you assimilate? Will you ever be a person of this nation? Or will your attempts to try this simply irritate the natives the way Salman Rushdie describes so brilliantly in East, West: "Foreigners can be dogged and can also, on account of language difficulties, fail to take a hint.. Foreigners forget their place (having left it behind) Given time, they begin to think of themselves as our equals It is an unavoidable hazard... Their children speak in a foreign tongue and learn ways which wreck the cultural baggage carefully transported across the seas. They retain an emotional bond with their homelands and yet feel disconnected from them.

Although they decry Western materialism, many feel superior to their brethren back home because they now have cars, colour TVs, mail-order exercise bikes and tiled bathrooms And there is the thorny question of how to behave. But many, too, have flourished, delighting in the way their presence has altered landscapes, lifestyles, the very definition of Britishness. A very proper Englishman once spent an entire train journey expressing his joy that Britain was now a multi-racial country: "You couldn't get any aubergines before." Reader, I married him.But the most integrated immigrants still have to deal with complex dilemmas. When Britain took in Vietnamese refugees, even Margaret Thatcher made glowing speeches about our international obligations.Life for these arrivals was not easy, and many of their children have ended up feeling it has been a wasted journey. For years afterwards, you would find in the houses of immigrants garlanded pictures of Prime Minister Edward Heath next to images of various deities, an expression of gratitude to the leader who stood up for us. When I arrived here in 1972, one of 30,000 Asians with British passports ejected out of Uganda, we did have to confront overweight Smithfield butchers who stood outside the airport spitting out abuse, but many other people in this country took us into their homes, gave us warm clothes and became trusted friends.

And, as Paul Foot wrote in 1965: "Commonwealth immigrants in Britain, before they became playthings of party politics...were greeted with general friendliness and hospitality."In the Sixties, it became trendy to befriend soulful intellectuals and artists fleeing communism and military dictatorships. We must maintain our great metropolitan tradition of hospitality to everyone from every part of our Empire." Enoch Powell encouraged nurse recruitment from the West Indies. Swarthy princes, seriously clever students and other children of the Empire also came over, bit by bit laying the foundations of the fertile cultural mix we find today. After the war, Britain accepted persecuted Jews and others and was proud to do so. Offering refuge was considered virtuous, especially for the signatories to the 1951 Geneva Convention. Tories such as the MP Sir David Maxwell Fyfe said in 1948: "We are proud that we impose no colour bar restrictions... Henry Mayhew recorded the presence of Indian jugglers, herbalists and magicians on the streets of London.

Way back in 1601, Elizabeth I demanded that "blackamoors" should be "discharged with all speed, out of these dominions", but the command was quietly ignored by the migrant ex-slaves and servants, many of whom had settled down with white women and had children. People have always been received into this country as asylum seekers, immigrants and workers. Our most recent asylum legislation means applicants awaiting decisions are denied benefits, and appeals procedures have been made harder, especially for those from the so-called "safe countries" It was not (altogether) ever thus. They may claim to be genuine immigrants and refugees, but to him most are cheats, scroungers and, above all, aliens who are bound to defile all that makes this country British. As unprecedented numbers of people - an estimated 50 million refugees - are uprooted around the world, this fear and hatred of the outsider has been growing, actively nurtured by some tabloid newspapers and Tory politicians. The British Bulldog is an increasingly nervy beast: snarling and snapping at dark strangers, sniffing them out in the back of stinking lorries, protecting his territory from people whom he believes are a threat to his good life. What will this mean? London, supreme metropolis of an eclecticism which includes comfort but eludes prediction, is very tantalising on this question.