The Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Before the Act was passed, citizens of British commonwealth countries had extensive rights to migrate to the UK. In response to a perceived heavy influx of immigrants, the Conservative Party government tightened the regulations, permitting only those with government-issued employment vouchers, limited in number, to settle. The leader of the opposition in the parliament at the time, Hugh Gaitskell, called the act "cruel and brutal anti-colour legislation".
The Act was amended by the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968, before being superseded by the Immigration Act 1971.
These Acts resulted from widespread opposition to immigration in Britain from a variety of political groups, but most notably the Conservative Monday Club, whose Members of Parliament were very active and vocal in their opposition to immigration.
Famous quotes containing the words immigrants, act and/or commonwealth:
“Even American women are not felt to be persons in the same sense as the male immigrants among the Hungarians, Poles, Russian Jews,—not to speak of Italians, Germans, and the masters of all of us—the Irish!”
—Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842–1906)
“No legislation can suppress nature; all life rushes to reproduction; our procreative faculties are matured early, while passion is strong, and judgment and self-restraint weak. We cannot alter this, but we can alter what is conventional. We can refuse to brand an act of nature as a crime, and to impute to vice what is due to ignorance.”
—Tennessee Claflin (1846–1923)
“The commonwealth of Athens is become a forest of beasts.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)