Education as a Social Exclusion Factor - Dissertation Example

Throngs of skilled and unskilled South Asians turned up to work in the textile and steel trades, primarily alone than with their wives and children. They were followed by trained workers and professionals, particularly medical professionals whose services were seriously needed to run the National Health Service. Pressure for immigration control mounted, as their numbers increased leading at first to various kinds of restrictions and to a virtual halt of primary migration in 1971 (Hiro, 1991; Modood & Berthoud, 1997).

From the 1960s onwards, as Britain started to decolonize its African empire, South Asians, whom it had enlisted to help run the empire and its economy, felt insecure. When the newly self-governing African countries, especially those in East Africa, started on a program to give favored treatment to their own people their sense of uncertainty increased. Many South Asians from Kenya with British passports began pouring into Britain. As their number increased, the Labor Government under James Callaghan approved a law in 1968 rejecting their entry.

The news of the impending legislation caused a panic, and resulted in the arrival of thousands, together with those who had no plan of coming to Britain. South Asians were beleaguered and began to arrive in Britain in small numbers when Idi Amin came to power in Uganda. In 1972, Amin sent away all British passport-holding South Asians; Britain was assisted by Canada, Australia, and India when it requested the world to ‘share the burden’. Gradually it gracefully acknowledged and resettled over 27,000 of them (Metcalf, Modood, & Virdee, 1996).