London, 22 December 1972
Personal And Confidential
Immigration
1. Thank you for sending me Julian Amery’s interesting ideas .about the possible future shape of our immigration policy. I have read his paper with interest.
2. I do not think that there is all that difference between Julian’s ideas and my own since, as you know, I have already proposed that Commonwealth citizens with a parent or grandparent born in the United Kingdom should be free to work and settle here without the need for work permits, and should be free to settle here as husbands of resident women. As I explain below, I think that there would be serious drawbacks to extending these concessions to foreign nationals or to going further back in time than grandparents.
3. Julian proposes that foreign nationals of British descent should have the same freedom of entry (but not civic privileges) as EEC nationals. I suppose the basic idea here is that we would be saying that foreign nationals of British descent should receive at least as good treatment as any other foreign nationals receive. But I wonder whether public and Parliamentary opinion is prepared to make this kind of easement at a time when we have to give free right of entry to EEC nationals and when, as I am proposing, we intend to admit freely Commonwealth citizens with parents or grandparents born here—some 12 million or so. It is not just a question of South African nationals of British descent since we have to bear in mind the very large numbers in the United States, and perhaps elsewhere, who might benefit from such a provision. I think it might be felt that this was throwing the doors too wide open, even for people of British descent.
4. Both Julian and yourself make the point that ‘British descent’ might not be too easy to define, and this brings us straight up against the point, not mentioned in Julian’s paper, that the world is not divided into foreign and Commonwealth countries. There is also the Republic of Ireland, and in particular the large numbers all over the world who are descended from people born in what is now the Republic at a time when it was part of the United Kingdom. As you know, under the original grandparent patriality provision, as under the more limited provision now on the statute book, a Commonwealth citizen is to be free of our immigration control if he has a parent (or grandparent under the original proposal) born in what is now the Republic before 31st March 1922—that is at a time when it was included in the United Kingdom. It is, incidentally, in virtue of this provision that the new Australian High Commissioner, Mr Armstrong, is a patrial if he is correctly reported as saying that his parents were born in Ireland. Taking account of this point, Julian’s proposals would mean, for example, that the large numbers of people of Irish descent in the United States would be able to qualify under the ‘right of return’. Again, I do not believe that public or Parliamentary opinion would be prepared to accept this.
5. Apart from the question whether one could go outside the Commonwealth with a concession of this kind, there is the different point of how far back in time it would be right to go. We have had to look at this question on a number of occasions in the last few years, and have always concluded that it would not be safe to go further back than grandparents. This is because if one goes back to an earlier generation the case for admission is then dependent on proof of birth at a date before central registration of births was introduced in the United Kingdom, and so the parish registers are the only source of evidence. We do not think that this would be workable. Provided that one does not go back further than grandparents it is easy to make a quick check with Somerset House, even while a passenger is held up at a port, and the evidence cannot be forged, or at any rate not in a way which is not open to speedy discovery. But if we were dependent upon parish registers cases could not be dealt with promptly and we believe that forgery would be less difficult.
6. These are the reasons, as I see them, why it would be unwise to go wider than the Commonwealth, or further back than grandparents, in any concession that we might make.
[UKNA: FCO 24/1318]