BRITAIN: Mrs. Thatcher's Bold Gamble

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Home Secretary Merlyn Rees calls Britain's immigration problems "the legacy of imperialism." The current furor is not aimed at the shrinking number of West Indian black immigrants (600,000), but at the larger influx of Indians and Pakistanis (1.3 million), who began arriving in the late 1950s. Ironically, Tory governments passed the laws that granted amnesty to those who had been in the country illegally for more than five years and gave them British citizenship rights.

Immigrants from the subcontinent have formed London's biggest Asian communities, at Hounslow and Southall, in ear-aching proximity to Heathrow Airport, where they first set foot on British soil. Many found service jobs at the airport, saved their money and brought over their families. The Indians and Pakistanis also brought different languages, religions, styles of dress and mores. Steak-and-kidney pies have given way to curries in some neighborhood shops; saris, turbans and mosques have become distinct features of the English cityscape. But none of the customs has been more inflammatory or more misunderstood than the subcontinent's tradition of arranged marriages. Under present laws, immigrant parents can bring into Britain suitable young men or women from their native lands for their sons or daughters to marry. As one London housewife put it: "Nobody can convince me it isn't a racket, whatever the Indians say."

Statistically, at least, the issue appears less of a problem than the public outcry suggests. The government last year issued only 391 work permits for males from the subcontinent. The best estimates are that at the present rate of immigration, the coloreds by the end of the century will still be only 5.5% of the British population. As for the popular fear of a hordelike bridegroom brigade, out of a total of 11,061 men permanently admitted to Britain in 1976 as fiancés or husbands, only 3,612 were Indians and Pakistanis. Ian Martin, director of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, believes that those numbers will taper off even more as Asian girls in England rebel against the idea of marrying unknown boys from their fathers' native villages.

Since the National Front has proposed expulsion of the immigrants, Callaghan and Rees understandably challenged Mrs. Thatcher to say just how she planned to end immigration without abrogating Britain's legal commitments. TIME has learned that the Tories have drawn up several new proposals on immigration. The major points: 1) virtually a total clampdown on admission of fiancés, 2) a register to be compiled of all remaining direct dependents of immigrants already in Britain, with a strict quota system for entry of those dependents, 3) citizenship granted "only in the most exceptional circumstances" for those who entered the country after 1973, and 4) repeal of the amnesty granted illegal immigrants in 1973. The latter point, some Conservatives indicate, does not mean uprooting those already settled, but it would deny them the right to bring in wives or children.