Closing the Door

Barely six months have passed since British Prime Minister Edward Heath won what he called a "legal and moral" victory over many of his countrymen and his own Conservative Party. The victory was a parliamentary ruling that allowed 27,500 Asians expelled from Uganda last autumn to enter Britain. Now the government has completely reversed its stand by proposing one of the toughest, and in many ways the most racist, set of immigration rules in British history. Although opposed by the Labor Party, the new legislation is expected to be passed this week by the House of Commons, where the Tories have a firmly united 13-seat majority.

The new immigration policy is prompted by a growing fear on the government's part that other African nations, notably Kenya, may soon begin expelling their Asians who hold British passports.* Weighing the potential outcry at home against Britain's moral obligations to the Asians abroad, Heath has decided to bend to political reality. Thus the rules will reduce to an "inescapable minimum"--specifically, 3,000 people per year--any further emigration of British passport holders from so-called "new Commonwealth" nations, all of which have black or Asian majorities, and a total of about 241,000 such passport holders. At the same time, the door will be left open to some 13 million mostly white members of "old Commonwealth" nations: Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Asians and Africans are already feeling the squeeze; even tourists and businessmen from new Commonwealth nations on temporary visits to Britain find it difficult to pass through immigration control as officials anticipate the new rules. "It is nearly at the point where a colored man in this country can't have visitors," complains a senior government official involved with race relations and immigration policy. "The chances are he won't get in at all, and if he does it will only be after a very embarrassing grilling."

Behind the tough new stand is a fact of life painful to most Englishmen: massive emigration from East Africa, Asia and the West Indies has created a new nation within Britain that has doubled to 1.5 million in just five years. The sudden influx of new faces and strange customs has created a sense of national schizophrenia. On the one hand, Britons still have strong feelings of cultural superiority and memories of an empire that they feel once civilized nearly half the world; on the other, they view themselves as inhabitants of a small, financially burdened island that is being overwhelmed by social change.

To outsiders at least, such fears seem exaggerated. Nonwhite immigrants account for only 2.5% of Britain's total population; despite charges of overcrowding caused by the influx, there are only two London boroughs in which they number more than 7% of the population. Because of their willingness to take jobs most Britons do not want, unemployment among immigrant groups from nonwhite countries is actually lower (2.8% v. 3.5%) than that of Britain's white population.

98.5% Yes. Such statistics have little impact on the average urban Englishman, who frets that the immigrants are not just living in England; they are tampering with his country's very way of life. "Blacks were people you used to see in the background of pictures of a royal tour," says a Midlands newspaper editor. "They were always down on their knees or dancing. Now they're living down the street and with a bigger car than you have. The immigrants have taken over poor areas where the only thing that people had left was their respectability. Now the whole character of these places has changed. If we could move the entire colored population some place where they would be happy --with their permission, of course --you'd get a 98.5% vote yes."

The problem is that most of the new immigrants do not want to move. In fact, despite the hostility of white Britons and the government's closed-door policy, Asians and West Indians continue to move into Britain (most of them illegally) at the rate of 100 a week. Ironically, one effect of the new rules will probably be to increase this flow--and further enrich the smugglers who bring immigrants in at up to $2,400 a head. Most of the illegal newcomers are smuggled into Britain aboard small boats. "We treat them like slaves," brags one Dutch operative, who quickly adds, "for their protection."

Even though they are impacted into slums around industrial cities and forced to make do with menial jobs, the new arrivals are determined to remain in Britain. They are also confident their lot will improve. "In 20 years' time," predicts Asian Community Leader On Dogra, "the best examples of industrial militancy will come from the Asians, but so will the best examples of discipline and hard work." Many of Britain's black immigrants tend to agree, but their feelings, like those of the whites who surround them, are couched in fear and animosity. Recalling that the Asians' wealth and exclusivity were among the reasons given for their expulsion from Uganda, a West Indian social worker warns that "Asians will become middle-class exploiters of the groups still at the bottom. It will be the East African situation all over again."

*After the Indian and East African independence movements, many Asians deliberately chose to accept the British citizenship that was offered to them rather than become nationals of the countries in which they lived. If expelled from their homelands these British passport holders, under the new immigration policy, will in effect become stateless persons.

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