LIKE most of the country I’ve watched with horror as the migrant crisis in Calais has unfolded over the past few weeks.

Not because I live in fear of a swarm of smelly foreigners coming over here taking jobs from hard-working Brits or living off the dole, but because in the year 2015 people still need to put their lives at risk to get into another country.

We’re frequently told what a progressive, enlightened society we live in, yet for some reason we’re still cowering behind arbitrary borders some bright spark scribbled on a map thousands of years ago.

Differences in language, culture, laws and so on are only there because we’ve spent millennia constructing national identities which mean absolutely nothing in a world when you can be on the other side of the planet in just a few hours.

With the exception of skin colour – which means less than nothing to anyone with a hint of a moral core – there is no real difference between people from different countries.

Spouting the age-old argument that some imaginary “we” have more right to live in this country and anyone from anywhere else shouldn’t be allowed to benefit from the NHS or watch Strictly Come Dancing is nothing short of disgusting.

The fact that anyone thinks people from another country shouldn’t be allowed to come to the UK is abhorrent and that this argument is still made in the year 2015 shows just how little we’ve progressed as a species.

People are literally being killed while trying to get here so they can afford to feed their children, but instead of welcoming them with open arms, we’re putting up more roadblocks to make it harder just so we can keep nice and comfortable on our little island.

If someone is willing to put their life at risk by clinging to the bottom of lorry for hours then they deserve to live here.

Clinging to these arbitrary national identities is the single biggest factor holding us back as a species. Is it really going to take discovering alien life and joining some Star Trek-esque federation of planets for people to realise it doesn’t really matter which side of an invisible border that you only know is there because it’s written on a map you live on?

I hope not, but I fear this may be the case.