yesterday headed "UK fetes Caribbean immigrants''. The story from Reuters news service in London briefly outlined a "glittering reception'' given by the United Kingdom Foreign Office and attended by Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair. The reception was to mark the first wave of West Indian Immigrants to Britain 50 years ago and to honour those immigrants and the contribution they and their descendants have made to Britain.

Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the guests at the reception that the immigrants had enriched Britain immeasurably and they had suffered too much racism and too much alienation from the main stream of British society.

What struck us was the very different and much less enlightened approach Bermuda takes to the immigrants to Bermuda from Britain, the Azores, the West Indies and other places like Canada and Italy who have come to Bermuda and enriched Bermuda immeasurably.

In Bermuda, we accept their enrichment, use the best years of their lives and then try to tell them they cannot stay. How much better it would be for daily life in Bermuda if we could learn Robin Cook's kind of acceptance.

West Indian immigrants to Britain were tempted there by jobs helping to rebuild post-war Britain. Most immigrants to Bermuda were brought here to make contributions Bermudians could not or would not make. They came from Canada to staff the hospitals and from Britain to teach our children. They came to staff garages when cars boomed or to install business machines and computers as post-war business expanded. They came as Policemen when Bermudians refused to join the Police Service and to the hotels so that we could expand and redevelop after the lean war years. They came to grow vegetables and flowers, mow our lawns and fix our roads. They came to provide expertise for our banks so that they could expand all over the world. Doctors came when Bermuda needed them, lawyers when we wanted to get into the international company business, accountants when companies had to be serviced, yes and journalists, as the news media met Bermuda's demands in the information age. Like the immigrants to Britain they did suffer racism of all kinds, prejudice, even animosity and many were alienated from mainstream Bermuda society.

Many went home of their own accord and left behind their contributions, some major, some minor, some good and some bad but that is the nature of people.

Let none of us make a mistake, Bermuda would be nothing like the great success story it is today if they had not come.

Do we celebrate them and their contribution? No.

Why? Because we are still mired in jealousy, prejudice, alienation and a great deal of immaturity.