ABSTRACT
The McGarran-Walter Act in 1952 placed drastic restrictions on the migration of West Indians to the US It was the final seal to a policy of increasing intensity to reduce black migration to the US from the Caribbean. In schooling terms, West Indian immigration resulted in specific consequences for the education system with their own particularities. Initially children of Caribbean background formed the bulk of the immigrant British school population. Since poverty and unemployment were major push factors in the migration of West Indian peoples it follows that the Afro-West Indians most affected by these factors would form the bulk of the migrants from the West Indies. In the early years of mass migration many of the children of immigrants in schools were born in the home country of their parents. They arrived at different ages and this resulted in disadvantages from the difference in teaching and discipline methods to which they were accustomed.
