The Oompa Loompas.

Just around the corner from where Dearly Beloved and I live there is one of those hand car-washes which have started springing up. Originally, it was a Perspex drive-through cubicle where you put money into the machine and received seven minutes of high pressured water out of a hand held wand which you waved at the car. You invariably got wet but it was good fun. Sadly it was barely used and languished at the back of the petrol station car park looking sorry for itself. An enterprising East European managed to arrange a deal with the petrol station to take it over. He turned up with some friends, put a makeshift notice outside offering to clean your car inside and out for a tenner and customers started to come. By some trick of fate the workers were all short, swarthy fellows dressed in similar outfits with cheerful smiles and limited command of English. Apart from the colouring, they looked for all the world like a bunch of Oompa Loompas.

Since then the business has grown. I went there to get my car washed today and there were at least a dozen workers all beavering away furiously with a queue of waiting cars stretching back to the main road. As I was watching, it occurred to me that I know nothing about these people. For all I know the chap cleaning my windscreen might have a masters' degree in astrophysics. Perhaps he couldn't get a teaching job in his own country and came here to improve himself and is just cleaning cars to make ends meet. Maybe the guy blacking my tyres is actually an excellent drummer who spends his days daydreaming about making it big. It's possible that the guy hoovering out my boot might have some strange and precocious talent that sets him apart from the rest of humanity. Perhaps the little guy collecting the money is the world's funniest comedian, if only I could understand his language.

Whatever your thoughts on Immigration, I think most people would have to admit that it takes a lot of balls to leave your friends and family to travel to a foreign country to try and find work. It involves personal expense, sacrifice and potential hardship to start at the very bottom doing the most menial of jobs. Even if they can earn a month's money in a week here and most of the homeland population are dirt poor it would still take a lot of courage and determination to walk away from everything you know into the unknown. If the situation were reversed I couldn't say for definite that I would have the inner steel necessary.

As I drove out of the petrol station and my thoughts turned elsewhere the workers ceased to be individuals and just became the Oompa Loompas again. To be given no more thought than my postman or local shop worker; just simply there to perform a function. They blended into the faceless mass of 'Immigrant' people to be argued over by politicians and the media for political point scoring. I'm not saying immigration is right or wrong but, as individuals, perhaps some of them should be commended and respected for their bravery and determination to make life better for themselves.