The Girl Without a Country

Africa's march to independence has given most of the Dark Continent back to its black majority. But it is also worsening the lot of the area's most significant nonwhite minority--the Asians of East Africa. Thousands of Indian, Pakistani and Goanese immigrants, who for many decades dominated commerce and small trade in Kenya and Uganda, could become in effect, stateless persons.

Last week their plight was cruelly dramatized by the case of Ranjan Vaid. Brought from India as a baby in 1948, the slight, bright-eyed girl spent most of her 22 years in Kenya. When Britain granted the colony independence in 1963, Ranjan was among the 120,000 Asians in Kenya who opted to retain the dark blue passport of the United

Kingdom. For many, it has proved an unfortunate choice. In 1968, alarmed by growing racial tensions in Britain, Parliament amended the Commonwealth Immigrants Act in an effort to stem the rising flow of Asians into the United Kingdom. The amended act granted entry permits to only 8,500 Commonwealth immigrants a year and provided a special allotment for only 1,500 British Asians (plus dependents).

In a Vise. When Kenya and Uganda adopted policies of Africanization, the Asians were caught in a vise. Preference in business licensing and government jobs went to blacks, or in a few cases to Asians who had taken out Kenyan or Ugandan citizenship. Many Asians who had spent their entire lives in East Africa found, like Ranjan, that they could no longer get jobs. But neither could they emigrate to Britain.

Two weeks ago, Ranjan boarded a Lufthansa flight for London. There she planned to join her brother Shantilal, 38, who entered Britain before the 1968 quota was imposed and now earns $38.40 per week as an accountant. But Ranjan's name was far down on the list of some 6,000 Asians waiting for approval to enter Britain, and she was turned away by immigration officials at London's Heathrow Airport.

Then began a nightmarish, nine-day odyssey of 17,069 miles. When she sought to return to Kenya, she was refused entry. Three other countries rejected her pleas for admission. She drifted to airports in Frankfurt, Zurich, Athens, Nairobi and Johannesburg, still clad in the same lime-green sari and red cardigan she wore when she left home. She was near collapse: "I have lived on rolls and coffee for a week," she said. "I just want to go to bed and sleep."

Her situation stirred an uproar. In the House of Lords, a Laborite peeress asked scathingly if the government considered it "conducive to British prestige that holders of British passports should be wandering about the world like Flying Dutchmen." Finally, beleaguered Home Secretary James Callaghan issued Ranjan a three-month entry permit. He also warned: "I cannot promise to make it easy for those who try to jump the queue."

Others are likely to try, even though their chances of success seem slim. Second-class citizens in their adopted homelands, unwelcome in their native countries and unwanted in England, they form what Liberal M.P. David Steel called "a growing community of semi-destitute British citizens." Already plagued by inadequate housing, crowded schools and bitter competition for jobs, Britain seems unwilling to worsen the situation by relaxing its immigration laws.

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