Last week the Institute for Public Policy Research published a report which has likely made Sir Andrew Green incandescent with rage.

Sir Andrew is the head of Migration Watch, a right-wing think-tank hell bent upon arguing that immigrants are a no good bunch of do nothings. The arguments proposed by Migration Watch have a familiar ring and run along the lines that immigrants are a drain, a waste, a plague upon our society and should be removed forthwith, never to darken our shores again.

The new IPPR study tends to suggest otherwise. Beyond Black And White analyses information on migration taken from the last census and provides a startling analysis.

When I was born in 1971, the percentage of foreign-born people living in this country was 4.55 per cent. By 2001, the time of the last census, the figure had risen to 7.53 per cent. Barely the kind of outrageous increase to feed a tabloid headline.

Just under two million immigrants have settled in Britain during those 30 years - 1.86 million to be precise - a statistic which renders laughable and absurd the overblown, astronomical figures and projections flung around by Migration Watch in order to scare people to think we are being swamped.

Yet, there's more to the new IPPR report than bold numbers. The research also busts the myth regarding the image of an immigrant as a swarthy-skinned young man with language difficulties. Most immigrants to the UK come from Ireland, whilst those immigrants coming from America and Germany both outnumber those who were born in Bangladesh.

Another myth buster comes in the fact that, on average, immigrant groups earn more than people born in Britain, correspondingly paying more in tax and national insurance. Hence immigrants, those scapegoats of everything from rising crime to failing public services, pay in more, on average, to the system as guests than those who live here by right.

As the child of immigrant parents, I know only too well the hard work and contribution made by my parents to the society we share. What Sir Andrew and the other naysayers fail to embrace is not only the economic and cultural contribution of immigrants, but also the need for acceptance to be the starting point of any relationship. At a time when young Muslim men are seduced into believing they have no place in British society as a prerequisite for carrying out suicide attacks, the search for a national common identity must be posited on acceptance or be doomed to failure.

If we are to build a society which embraces and values each of its members, then the starting point must be a society which ends the cycle of scapegoating which blames each incoming group for society's ills. The fact that the London bombers were homegrown urges us to look within for answers and to stop buying those old and weary arguments tarnished with xenophobia.